Chapter 3

Tony Stark looked up from his work table in the Iron Man armory and in the direction of his phone, which he had set down before beginning to work. He saw that the call was from Pepper and answered it.

"Hi, Pep," he answered morosely, still feeling down from the funeral earlier.

"Hi, Tony," the redhead answered on the other end of the line. "Listen, Tony… I'm not going to be coming to the armory today. I… I just need some time alone. To think a while, you know?"

Tony closed his eyes and rubbed his face with his free hand, knowing perfectly well what she meant. While he would have liked to have her with him now, he knew that they would probably not really be able to talk about anything except what had happened to Happy, and the general topic of death. He definitely did not want that. It was better for them both to be alone for a little while and sort out their thoughts before meeting up to provide each other company.

"Sure, Pep. I understand. Call me if you want to talk, OK?"

"I will. Thank you, Tony. I hope you're OK, too. I know it must have been hard for you today. I'll probably see you tomorrow. Bye."

"Bye, Pepper," and with that the inventor disconnected the call. He immediately got back to work, to distract himself from the most recent loss in his life.

xxxXXXxxx

Pepper put her phone away and hopped on her scooter, making sure her snack pack was secure. She hated lying to Tony like that. Well, she did not exactly lie, but she had withheld the truth from him about why she was not coming in to see him today.

After seeing what she had seen at the cemetery once everybody in attendance at the funeral had left, Pepper had decided that she needed someone to talk to. Tony and Rhodey were already feeling as depressed as herself right now and she did not want to further burden them with her troubles. Gene had disappeared after the funeral, so that ruled him out. She did not want to talk to her father, or Roberta, or anyone outside her age range really, due to the fact that they would likely not believe her and would chalk what she had seen up to her mind playing tricks on her due to her sadness at Happy's passing. And considering how she felt at the moment, and will full respect to Tony and Rhodey being the great guys they were, Pepper felt that she needed female company for this.

This was why she was now riding her scooter upstate, to the more rural and secluded areas. Lacking any friends of her own gender back in the city, Pepper had decided to go see the one person who fit the criteria, whom she felt would be willing to listen to her and provide some support. And so, after a couple of hours on the road, Pepper stopped outside the front gate to the private grounds of a large estate. The name posted on the sign above the gate read: Xavier Institute for Higher Learning.

Pepper knew that Professor Charles Xavier enrolled mutant children into this school, in order to help them learn to control their powers and be able to integrate into human society in a positive manner, as well as provide a good quality education like an actual school.

Noticing a speaker box attached to the gate, and not certain what to do now that she was here, Pepper pushed the button on the box and waited. A moment later, a man's voice came through the speaker.

"How can we help you?"

"Uhm," Pepper hesitated, feeling a little nervous. "I'm Pepper Potts. Er, that is, I'm Rescue of Team Iron Man… from, uh, New York City… and, uhm…" Pepper hated stammering, as it was rare that she was at a loss for words. She decided to forgo formalities and get right to it. "I don't have an appointment or anything, but I'm here to see Jean Grey. I'd like to talk to her, if she's available."

There was no immediate response from the man on the other end of the line, and after a few seconds went by, Pepper began to wonder if perhaps they were checking on her identity. She could understand their caution, considering most of the world's prejudicial view of mutants. Much to her shame, Pepper herself had once had that view. Befriending Jean Grey had allowed her to get over it, and she supposed that was part of the reason why she felt she could trust her right now. How could you not trust a person who helped you get over a negative quality of yourself? After roughly twenty seconds had passed, the man's voice came through the speaker again.

"Come on in."

This was followed by the sound of the gate unlocking, and it then began to swing open. Pepper saw no mechanisms to indicate that it was being opened remotely, and she had to wonder if some mutant inside the property was using their unique gift to unlock and open the gate from afar. Pepper could not help a tiny shiver that ran down her back, but she ignored it. Compared to what she had seen at Morningside Cemetery earlier, such a feat was a parlor trick at best.

The ginger turned her scooter on and rode down the private roadway until she came to the front steps of the massive mansion. She turned the motor off and placed her helmet on the handlebars, looking up at the enormous house with awe. She then proceeded to ascend the steps toward the front door. A mere instant before her knuckles were about to rap upon the door, it opened and Jean Grey stepped out, giving her fellow redhead a wide smile.

"Pepper! It's so good to see you here," Jean said with sincere cheerfulness at seeing her friend. She stepped forward and embraced Pepper for a quick hug before stepping back. "What brings you here?"

"Well," Pepper felt hesitant. "I wanted to talk to you about something. I sort of had an incident today, and I'm not sure if it really happened or what it means, or if it was just a trick my mind was playing on me. I was hoping you could help me sort it out."

After listening to this, Jean nodded and seemed to go into deep thought. Pepper wondered briefly if she was communicating telepathically with someone inside.

"Of course, I'd be happy to help in any way I can. Come on in," Jean moved aside to usher Pepper into the mansion, closing the door behind them.

xxxXXXxxx

Pepper felt extremely intimidated right now. She had been offered a drink and snack once Jean had invited her inside the school, and although she was not hungry, she had accepted a lemonade. Jean had then brought her into the private study of none other than Professor Xavier himself. The professor was currently on the opposite side of a round table from herself, with Jean Grey sitting off to the left of Rescue alter ego. Knowing that such a well respected figure as Charles Xavier, who was also one of the most powerful mutants on Earth, had taken an interest in hearing her concerns was quite an honor.

"So, Miss Potts, Jean tells me that you are seeking assistance in determining if something you saw recently actually happened, or if your perceptions may have been… questionable?"

"That's right, Professor," Pepper replied, amazed at how eloquent the professor was with his words.

"Well then, why don't you being by telling us what happened."

Pepper nodded, took another sip of her lemonade to wet her throat, and then clasped her hands together and rested them on the table top. She took in a deep breath, then began.

"It started a few days ago, when Rhodey's mother got a call informing her that our friend Happy had been found dead. The police ruled it as a suicide. Well, Tony, Rhodey and I were pretty shaken up by it. Happy was a good friend to all of us. I… I even dated him for a short while. He was kind of dim; a muscle-bound jock really, but he had a heart of gold underneath the testosterone. He was honestly a great guy, he didn't deserve to die so young, and we really couldn't believe that he would kill himself."

Pepper paused, knowing that she had a tendency to ramble a mile a minute, and wanted to give her hosts time to take in what she was telling them. She supposed that they could have just read her mind and gotten all the information they needed, but they seemed to be respecting her privacy and allowing her to verbalize the situation. Professor X nodded along, while Jean Grey reached over and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Go on, Pepper. We're listening."

Pepper nodded at Jean, looked back to the professor, and continued.

"This morning was Happy's funeral. I attended the service inside the funeral home, but I didn't stay for the burial. I just couldn't. So, I rode my scooter into the cemetery and watched the service from afar with my binoculars. Once it was over and everyone started to leave, I was about to leave, too. But, before I did, something happened…"

Once the back of the hearse was only a few feet away from the coffin, the vehicle stopped and was left idling as the tall mortician got out of the driver seat and walked to the back of the hearse, opening up the rear compartment where caskets were held during transportation.

Pepper stared intently through the lenses of her binoculars, her knuckles starting to turn white as she gripped them tightly in concentration, paying as close attention as possible. As she watched, the tall mortician stood next to the coffin, looked around to see if any of the funeral attendees were lingering, and upon seeing that none were, he knelt to the ground. Pepper was confused at what he was doing, as he seemed to be reaching his right arm over the top of the coffin to the other side, and reaching his left hand down to the bottom, gripping it easily as the framework it rested upon was keeping it suspended over the rectangular hole in the ground that it was supposed to be lowered into.

Following along with every move, the redhead witnessed as the mortician then stood up straight, lifting the entire casket right up with him, then took a few casual steps to the back of the hearse, where he more or less tossed the coffin inside, pushed on the end a little to make sure it slid all the way in, and then shut the door.

The redhead slowly lowered the binoculars, her face marked with an expression of mingled shock, confusion, and disbelief.

"What the–?!"

She had watched earlier as five men – two of which had been full grown adults and the other three, while young men, were each in good physical shape – had all needed to work together to lift and maneuver that casket. It had to have weighed hundreds of pounds on its own, never mind with Happy's heavily muscled body resting inside. The tall, old man had lifted the coffin, body and all, as if it had been nothing more than a large pillow!

In sudden fear, Pepper leapt to her feet and ran to her scooter, not bothering to brush the few blades of grass from her skirt. She threw on her helmet and started the motor, taking off with a roar immediately. She did not even bother avoiding riding over the graves in front of her, knowing only that she had to get out of the cemetery and far away from it as quickly as possible.

As she rode, she felt her control suddenly start to slip. The handlebars seemed to go rigid and refused to maneuver now matter how hard she tried to pull them to one side or the other. She then felt the scooter begin to wobble. Not knowing why, Pepper looked back to the site of the funeral, and despite the distance, she could see that the tall mortician was looking directly at her, watching her as she rode away. An instant later, it was as if some invisible force pushed her scooter over, knocking her to the grassy ground.

Pepper rolled over twice before coming to a stop. She winced as she felt that she had scrapped an elbow and probably bruised a knee. Breathing hard from adrenaline, she stood up and hopped back over to her fallen scooter, her leg beginning to numb up. As she righted the machine, she looked back over toward the burial once again, but this time, the tall man was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she saw the hearse driving away, back towards the mausoleum. The redhead hopped back on the bike and took off again. She had no further interruptions as she left the graveyard.

"And after I got home and changed into my normal clothes, I called Tony and told him I wouldn't be coming in to see him today. He agreed, and I headed straight up here."

Finishing her tale, Pepper looked at her two psychic hosts. The professor and Jean both looked at each other and seemed to share a silent conversation, something that was very possible between them.

"So, do you think maybe that, that… Tall Man, might be some kind of mutant? Maybe that's why he was able to lift that coffin like it was nothing," Pepper had to know if maybe they knew something about it, considering that the faculty members here were on a constant vigil to document any discovered mutants. The professor and Jean both looked back at Pepper, their expressions unreadable.

"There is something else that has been troubling you lately, is there not, Miss Potts," the professor asked. Pepper took another sip of her lemonade before answering.

"Well… I've just had this really bad feeling lately. Not really bad, actually, just… I don't know. I just feel like something's going to happen… with Tony. We're going to be going off to college in a few months and neither of us is going to the same place as the other. And now the whole world knows that we are superheroes," Pepper gulped down her anxieties. "I don't know why, but I'm afraid that I'm going to lose him somehow. That's part of the reason why I've wanted to spend more time with him lately, doing different things. It's not just because he's my boyfriend. I'm afraid that I only have so much time to be with him, either way."

Professor Xavier smiled kindly to the ginger, and Jean Grey gave her hand another reassuring squeeze.

"Miss Potts, I can't tell you if what you saw today was real or not. If I were to read your thoughts, I would know only what you know, only what you could recall seeing. If I were to inhabit your mind as you were seeing it, I could break down the filter your perception would have on what you were seeing, but when dealing only with memory, that is a far different task. For that, I am afraid that we can be of no help to you."

Pepper slumped in her seat a little as the professor held his hands together and pressed them against his lips, thinking carefully about what he wanted to do to provide some form of assistance to the girl.

"However, I can certainly understand the anxieties that a teenage girl on the verge of adulthood might have, particularly in regards to someone close to them. In this case, the fear of losing a young man whom you see as both the boy you love romantically, and who you also love as your best friend. Being on the cusp of starting a new chapter of your lives would put enough strain on you as it is, but to add in the recent death of another friend, and the fear of loss becomes magnified significantly. Your fears in this matter are not at all unusual or unnatural."

The professor turned to Jean and nodded once, which she returned. With a flick of her hand, all of the curtains in the room drew shut, cutting off the early afternoon sunlight and making the room noticeably dimmer.

"If you don't mind, Miss Potts, I would like to do something a little unorthodox now, that may be able to help provide some clarity."

Pepper frowned in confusion at the professor as he held a hand against the side of his bald head. She saw his eyes look away from hers and down at the top of the table between them. Pepper looked down and saw that a black box had appeared in the center of the table. It was the size of a shoebox and jet black, with a large hole in the front. Pepper jumped in her seat a little, startled.

"Whoa! How did you do that? Is that real, or are you projecting an illusion into my mind?"

Her questions were ignored. Instead, Jean Grey, speaking in a cold, monotone voice, gave her an instruction.

"Place your hand inside the box, Pepper."

Pepper looked at her, surprised by her odd tone, and then looked back at the large and very dark hole at the front of the box. It did not look very inviting. She looked back up at Professor X, who only nodded at her. Gulping in nervousness, Pepper slowly lifted her hand and reached inside the hole.

She immediately felt something seize upon her hand, a pressure that was very tight, but warm, and it instantly filled her with dread.

"Hey! Something's got my hand," she shouted.

"Don't fear, Pepper," Jean Grey said in that same creepy monotone.

"Hey, this is really starting to hurt! Make it let go of me," Pepper's panic was rising more by the second.

"Don't fear, Pepper," Jean said again, unhelpfully.

"Why won't it let go?!"

"Don't fear."

Trying to push the box away with her other hand was yielding no results, so lacking any other alternatives, Pepper closed her eyes and tried to calm down. As soon as she stopped struggling, the tight grip on her hand began to loosen. As it continued to grow more loose, the redhead was able to calm down more and more, until after a few seconds the grip disappeared entirely and Pepper removed her hand from the box.

Jean Grey flicked her hand again and the shades were removed, letting the sunlight back into the room. The black box on the table was gone.

"Whoa," Pepper said again.

"It was simply reflection," Jean Grey said to her, her usual soothing tone having returned with the light. "Fear is the real killer, fear is the real enemy. That's what the professor wants you to learn."

Pepper rubbed her hand, seeing no marks, or even redness from the pressure she had felt.

"Wow, that really hurt," she said, looking to the two for some confirmation of what she had just experienced.

"It was all in your mind," Jean answered back.

Pepper was not sure exactly what this lesson was supposed to be about, but she knew one thing for sure; she would never stick her hand into anything that she could not clearly see the inside of, ever again.

Pepper stayed a little while longer, catching Jean Grey up on all that had happened with Team Iron Man since she had left the Tomorrow Academy. After a thank you for having listened to her and a hug goodbye, Pepper left the school and began her ride back to New York City. She was not sure if the trip had helped her at all, but she had to admit that she felt somewhat calmer about what she had seen earlier… and about her anxieties over Tony.

As she watched her friend ride away, Jean Grey furrowed her brow as she thought over all that Pepper had shared with them. Knowing that she had earned some free time away from the estate, Jean told Professor Xavier that she was going out for a while and then called a cab to pick her up at the front gate.

xxxXXXxxx

Tony Stark sat alone in his personal lab at Stark International, having not been able to get any work done at the armory, as seeing the armor had reminded him of the time Happy had piloted it for a day and had ended up accidentally saving the city from Unicorn and Killer Shrike. He knew it would not last forever, but with Happy's funeral having been so recent, he was grateful more than ever for the decrease in crime around the city. He figured he would need to be away from Iron Man business for a few days, just to realign himself.

He heard his door open and looked up to see Rhodey enter.

"Hey," his best friend said to him, closing the door and walking over to the adjacent empty chair, taking a seat.

"Hey. Got tired of dealing with it all alone?" Tony asked. Rhodey shrugged and then nodded slightly.

"Yeah, I guess. I just keep asking myself why whenever I'm alone, so I figured I'll hang out with you and Pepper until I let it go past me, and then I can get over it and move on."

Tony nodded to this, opened his mini-refrigerator next to his work desk, and tossed Rhodey a soda, which was easily caught.

"Pepper's not coming over today. She called me and told me she needed to be alone for a while, too. I guess it's hitting her harder than us. She did date Happy for a while, after all."

Rhodey nodded in understanding to that line of reasoning, and then asked a question that he had been wanting to ask since that morning, but had known it was not an appropriate time.

"Did you stop by your mother's grave?"

"Yeah," Tony replied, opening a soda for himself and taking a few gulps. Rhodey gave it a few seconds, then continued.

"This whole thing got you thinking about her? And about what happened when we thought your dad was gone?"

"Of course," Tony looked up along the wall, where there hung a picture of himself at four years of age, smiling at the camera, his mother kneeling down behind him, her arms over his shoulders and her hands linking over his chest, her chin resting atop his head, also smiling at the camera. His father had taken the picture of the two of them only a few weeks before his mother passed away. It was not the last photo of her, but it was the last of the two of them together, and so he had asked his father for that specific one to keep with him in his lab, as a reminder of why he was so adamant about using his genius to make a better world.

"Have you talked with Pepper about it," Rhodey asked. Tony shook his head.

"Not in detail. She knows what happened and she understands, 'cause she went through it, too, with her own mom. But, I think once we all feel OK again I'll probably tell her about it. I'm sure she'll appreciate it."

Rhodey nodded in agreement with his friend and continued to drink his soda, Tony doing the same. The two friends were quiet for a while after that, simply taking in the peace and the company each provided with gratitude.

xxxXXXxxx

Jean Grey walked down the marble hallway of the Morningside funeral home, her footsteps echoing in the otherwise silent air. She had wanted to take a close look at what might be going on at the mortuary after hearing Pepper's tale earlier that day. So, she had decided to do her own investigation, and had arrived in New York City by that evening. She had purchased some flowers before going to the cemetery, so that she could give the appearance of stopping by to visit a deceased loved one, all the while using her psychic and telepathic abilities to try and determine if there was any mutant activity taking place on the grounds.

So far, however, she was not getting anything. Which was strange in and of itself. She knew that people worked here, so she expected to be able to sense human minds nearby, or perhaps mutant minds if Pepper's theory was correct. But she had not detected anything, human or mutant, within the property boundaries of the cemetery, or within the mausoleum itself. She was detecting something, however; something faint, but she could not identify it in any way. It was something she had never felt before and she had absolutely no context for it. While she could not detect the activities of anything that was necessarily sinister, something out of the ordinary was definitely going on behind these walls.

Her eyes moved over the names of the dead that were interred within the marble walls around her, understanding why so many people got the creeps from being in such a location. At one point in time, every person that lay behind the slab of marble that showed their name for the outside world had once been walking around and looking at the world, just like her, with their own thoughts and fears and hopes and dreams. Now, they were entombed here, inert, until the end of time. It was existentially horrifying in its finality.

The quiet of the place was disturbed when she thought she heard a strange sound off to the side; an odd scratching, rustling, rasping sound. Turning her head down one of the many hallways that she passed, which led further into the mausoleum, she thought for a brief second that she saw a piece of brown cloth get pulled along the floor, out of sight. Readying herself to use her telekinesis if necessary, Jean began walking towards the corner that she had seen the cloth disappear around.

As she turned the corner, she came upon a door, over which were engraved into the marble the busts of gods from Greek mythology and lore. The door itself was pure white and looked very sturdy, set into the marble walls. Jean was confident that she could bring it down with her mind if need be, however. Reaching out, she tried the doorknob, fully expecting it to be locked. To her surprise, it twisted in her hand and the door easily opened a small crack.

From that crack, a pure white light, brighter than the sun, shown through and reflected off of the marble walls around her. She could also hear a strange, steady humming sound, like some kind of vibrating machinery was located within the room on the other side of the door, though there was no other sound than that gentle hum. Opening the door even wider, Jean Grey leaned around its edge and looked inside the room.

xxxXXXxxx

The grounds outside the mortuary were empty, as the Morningside Cemetery was closing down for the evening. As such, there were no strollers or passersby near enough to the funeral home to hear the high-pitched scream of a female echo out across the grassy grounds.

I'm hoping that I can have this story finished in time for Halloween, but if not, I figure that starting it the week before Halloween will make up for it if it should take longer to write and post it all, making it more fitting of the Halloween season than the actual date. Hope it's scary enough for you all, so far.