CHAPTER 8: DANGER SIGNS FLASHING IN MY BRAIN

***GWEN***

"Um...okay," Tony says, poking the Iron Man suit. "Are you sayin' I'm supposed to put this thing on? Like, right here, right now?"

Deadpool pauses in the process of firing his gun on the Dark Elves - or whatever he's really shooting at. We can't see what he claims to see, because none of us are anywhere near the balcony. "You gotta do it, dude," he calls out. "The writer says so."

"What writer?" I ask.

"You're really gonna humor him?" Skye whispers.

"Why not?" I say. "It'll give me something to do other than watch Tony struggle with that robo-suit."

Sure enough, Tony's already started trying to put the suit on, and he really has no idea what he's doing. "I think this was designed for a smaller guy," he grumbles, trying to stuff his arm into one of the suit's arms.

"I don't think so," Skye says. "You could say the same for the Spider-Man suit here. I mean, look at it. Who here thinks Peter could actually fit in that thing?"

"Excuse me? You tryin' to call me fat, Skye?" Peter crosses his arms.

"No, 'cause that would be absurd," Skye says. "Nothing could be further from…"

I tune out her voice as I approach Deadpool, against my better judgment. Call me crazy, but I think the crazy guy seems to know the most about what's going on here.

"Oh, now you wanna see the Dark Elves for yourself?" Deadpool asks. "Come here. Just lean over the edge and you'll see 'em. They're pretty good climbers, the little buggers." He takes another shot, and I can hear a pig-like squeal of pain as the bullet reaches its target.

I look down the side of the building and see no less than half a dozen Dark Elves, just as ugly and nasty as the ones I saw in San Fransokyo, scaling the smooth glass walls. "Are your shots even doing anything?" I ask.

"Besides slowin' 'em down? Nah." Deadpool shoots the nearest Elf, then steps back and switches out clips on his gun with casual slowness. "The writer says I'm just here to distract this scum before our boy Stark goes all medieval on their asses."

"There you go with that 'writer' stuff again," I say. I'm distracted for a moment by a loud clunk from the office - Tony's successfully gotten both his arms into the Iron Man suit, and now he's trying to work on doing the same with his legs. Unfortunately, now he can't even lift his arms up. No surprise there - he's a really skinny guy, all pale skin and fragile bones. I don't want to say being a rich boy will do that to you, but there's really no other quick and dirty explanation I can think of.

"Like you care about the writer," Deadpool says, slotting a new clip into place at last. "You think I'm insane, so you don't believe a word I say." It's not a question. "I'm what you'd call an unreliable narrator. Except I'm tellin' the truth, so it's basically up to you to decide whether or not you can trust me."

"And I decide not to trust you."

"Good call, baby." Deadpool cocks his gun and returns to the edge of the balcony to start shooting again. "'Cause I actually am insane, and in the immortal words of Loverboy, 'lovin' every minute of it.'" He pauses. "Yeah, it's Loverboy. I kept thinkin' it was Aerosmith, but the writer says it's really Loverboy."

"And that's exactly why I'm not gonna trust you," I say, glaring at him. "Because you're still gonna flirt with me, knowin' full well I'm underage and under-interested. That's not just insane. That's really, truly sick."

"Then why are you still hangin' around with me?" Deadpool asks. "'Cause the writer wants you to, that's why. He wants someone to interact with me so I'm not just lookin' like a fool, shootin' up Dark Elves for no apparent reason other than the fact that they're Always Chaotic Evil. Huh - he just realized the initials of those words spell 'ACE.'"

"You mean, you just realized that." Behind us, a loud noise alerts me to Tony tripping on his own feet after getting them into the suit. The floor in that office must be specially reinforced with steel or something, otherwise he'd probably have fallen through several stories' worth of drywall by now.

"No, the writer realized that," Deadpool corrects me after taking another potshot. "Ah well. Haters gonna hate, potatoes gonna potate. And the reason why he's puttin' you with me...well, obviously Stark's tryin' on the suit for what seems like the first time. Skye is there to help him out with that, so she's not available. I'd probably get along with Peter pretty well, but he's got this feeling in the back of his mind that I'm not to be trusted. It's probably 'cause he vaguely remembers a time when he was Spider-Man, workin' with me to take down Doc Ock, and I nearly let him die. Not my fault he was bein' all kamikaze suicide-run, just rarin' for that mechanical creep to do a little slicey-slice on his guts."

I laugh out loud upon hearing this, thinking it must be a really bad joke. "Peter, getting suicidal? I don't think so."

"You'd be surprised," Deadpool says. "Losin' the only non-family member you've ever loved can do things to you. Not that I'm speakin' from experience here - I've never been in love myself."

"And...wait a minute. Wasn't Doc Ock in some other Spider-Man movie? Not in the Amazing Spider-Man series."

"He shows up in the Amazing Spider-Man 'verse too," Deadpool says, shooting another Elf right in the skull. This time, it's so surprised that it actually loses its grip on the building and falls about two hundred feet before finally grabbing hold of a window it already broke on the way up. "That movie just hasn't been released yet. The company that makes the movies, they've had a bit of trouble lately. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 wasn't the big hit at the box office everyone thought it would be - the writer's especially pissed about that, 'cause he's one of those guys who, even though he sees flaws in the movie, thinks they only make the movie better. Hell, considering everyone clapped at the end when he saw it in theaters-"

"Get to the point," I grumble.

"Hold your mother-huggin' horses, honey. I haven't even gotten to the part where the North Koreans hacked the studio all 'cause of a dumb comedy about an assassination plot-"

"You're bullshittin' me here, aren't you?" I ask, shaking my head. "North Korea, one of the most dirt-poor countries in the world, hack a major movie studio? That's about as likely as Tony gettin' into that Iron Man suit."

"What about me and the Iron Man suit?" Tony asks, his voice amplified. I turn around to see him clunking up to me, fully sealed in the robo-suit.

Deadpool looks up from his shooting and blinks at me through his eyeholes. "You were saying?"

"You know I was bein' sarcastic, right?"

"Of course you were," Deadpool says. "You knew he'd get into the suit. Of course," he laughs, "whether or not he can use it properly is another story. I mean, there's only so much muscle memory can do."

"Don't worry," says Tony. Even the suit waves its hand lazily to emphasize his words. "I got this." He spreads his arms, palms down, then fires off a two-second burst of energy, allowing the suit to hover in the air for exactly that long before it comes crashing down again. The suit, with Tony inside, falls flat on its ass, then rubs its head. "Ow."

"Let's try that again," Skye says, clapping her hands. "Remember, Tony, there's only…" She looks over the edge, with Deadpool kindly stepping out of her way and waiting until she's gone before resuming his shooting. "Five Dark Elves climbin' your tower."

"Yeah," Peter says, patting the suit on the shoulder. "No pressure."

The suit tilts its head. I guess that's the closest it can come to approximating an eye-roll. "I get the feeling none of you have any confidence in me," Tony says. The suit's mask retracts, revealing his face. It looks to me like he's trying not to show any fear. But his eyes are looking a bit twitchy. He can't stop glancing off to the side for split seconds at a time.

"Seriously," Peter says, kneeling down to Tony's level. "You can do this. I was able to figure out how to do my superhero thing. Why not you?"

"Your superhero thing is all parkour-type shit, though," Tony says. "I'm not exactly equipped to do my own stunts here."

"So?" I decide to contribute to Peter's pep talk. "You're gonna need to learn this again anyway. Come on, get up. Get up and show us all what you're made of."

"And if you start to fall," Hiro says, putting on his neural-cranial transmitter, "I'll send my microbots to pick you up again."

Peter holds out his hand, as if to help Tony get up again, but he shakes his head. "I can do it myself, thanks." He awkwardly leverages himself into a standing position, then teeters on the spot for a second before walking to the edge of the balcony. "Hey, wait a minute," he says, glancing down at the circle of light shining on his chest. "If I'm really supposed to be Iron Man...then doesn't that mean I'm supposed to have some kind of magnet inside me?"

Deadpool takes one last shot, then steps away from the edge and moves back inside. "It's cleverly hidden, but it's there," he says. "A miniature arc-reactor that he who de-aged you put in you. Haven't you wondered why you haven't had an asthma attack in all your time in San Fransokyo?"

"How'd you know I have asthma?" Tony asks.

"Come on, kid. You're a techno-geek. It's a Sherlockian guess." Deadpool and Tony stare at each other for a moment. "All right, I give. The writer told me. You wanna find out more, take it up with him whenever he gets into your head. Deadpool, out!" He turns around, flashes a reverse peace sign, then crosses through the office doors - thankfully, without another word.

Tony looks down at the Dark Elves again, then puts the mask back on. "Stand back, people," he says. "This could get messy." He spreads his arms and tips forward over the edge.

Peter, Hiro, Skye, and I run forward to watch Tony's progress. His arms and legs flail around as he tries to get his bearings and figure out how to work the suit properly. Meanwhile, the Dark Elves continue to climb - they're now less than twenty feet away from us.

Halfway to the ground, Tony finally fires off the jet repulsors in the suit's hands and feet. He hovers in the air for a couple of seconds, then moves up and down, side to side, and diagonally in three dimensions. We can hear him laughing and swearing in his excitement as he whoops it up down there.

Then a pair of what look like miniature rocket launchers rise out of the suit's shoulders. "Hey assbutts! Suck on these!" Tony yells a second before the launchers fire their payload on the Elves. Each one gets hit by two small but powerful RPGs. Most of them impact on their legs or shoulders, but at least one takes it right in the left butt cheek. (Do Dark Elves even have butt cheeks? I guess they do, since they have a mostly humanoid anatomy and all.)

Either way, the explosives aren't lethal, but they're enough to make the Dark Elves let go of the building to a man - or Elf, I guess. They all fall to the ground, crushing a parked car or four in the process. And still, they don't die. Most of them clearly have broken backs or necks, but all they need to do is reach up and click their heads back into place. Yes, we can actually hear the clicks up here.

"That's gross," I say.

"I know, right?" Peter says. "There should be a law against that."

Luckily, the Dark Elves don't seem to be in a fight-to-the-death kind of mood today. As soon as they've picked themselves up and dusted the broken glass off their tunics (or whatever the hell those things they're wearing are called), they turn tail and leave.

Tony rises up to meet us. His suit seems to know where it's going - it lands on a curved walkway, and from there, a series of machines start picking off the suit in pieces as he walks. I bet he usually walked normally through this device, however - it's not designed to compensate for a Tony who's jumping all over the place, vibrating with excitement like he's never been in the Iron Man suit before. Which, for all intents and purposes, he hasn't. The machine parts keep whacking him in the face, chest, etc. as they try to remove the suit.

"You guys all saw that, right?" Tony calls over to us while we walk up to him. "Holy mother of God and all her wacky nephews! I need to do this every damn day!"

"As soon as we get back to San Fransokyo," Skye says. "We'll pick up another one of our Avenger friends, then take you all back to our super-top-secret SHIELD base where you can train in the suits as much as you like...for a couple of days, anyway."

"Why just a couple of days?" Tony asks, pouting at Skye like he's already having his new toy taken away.

"'Cause...well, who knows what could happen by then?" Skye opens the office door, and we can see the Iron Man suit once again standing behind the desk. "Guys, I'll need you all to help me carry this thing downstairs," she says. "Same with the Captain America suit. Peter, I think you can handle the Spidey-suit on your own."

"Right," Peter says. He takes the suit down and slings it over his shoulder, then picks up the legs of the Iron Man suit. Skye and Tony take an arm each, while I carry Captain America's armor. The shield proves too heavy for any of us to lift ourselves, so Hiro uses his microbots to carry that one.

"I'm almost afraid to ask," I say, "but which one of our friends is supposed to be Cap?"

Skye grins, recognizing his nickname. "Thanks for reminding me," she says. "Tony, you have Steve's number, right?"

"Not Steve Rogers?" Peter asks, stifling a chuckle.

"Why? You already guessed it was him?" Skye asks.

"No," Peter says. "But that's kinda...sorta...well, it's an in-joke, so you probably wouldn't get it. But Barton and I...in our journalism class, we call him 'Captain Awesome.'"

Skye nods approvingly as we get into the elevator. "Also an accurate description. Tony, his number?"

Tony gives Skye the number, and she lowers the upper half of the Iron Man suit while she dials it. Then she hands her phone off to Tony. "You can probably sweet-talk him better than I can," she says. "You know him best out of all of us."

Tony rolls his eyes. "Sweet-talk? You're not seri-hey, Rogers!" The abrupt shift in his tone of voice is actually pretty unnerving. "What's up? Hang on, I'll put you on speaker." He holds the phone out, then thumbs the screen a couple of times. "All right, you're on. Hey, guess who else is here with me? Parker, Gwen Stacy, Barton, the Hamadas...yep, everyone and their mother."

"Well, where the hell are you?" Steve asks. "Haven't you seen the news? There's been an attack in the city...and I heard something went wrong with your science fair project, but nobody really knows what happened. I swear, I think I took a wrong turn somewhere and stepped into a comic-book movie."

Tony laughs out loud. "Yeah, funny story about that...but it'll take too long to explain. I got a question for you - how would you love to discover your inner superhero?"

"What are you talkin' about? Seriously, Stark, what's goin' on?"

"Rogers, you're not gonna believe us if we tell you," Peter says.

"You should see it for yourself," I say.

"Parker? Gwen? Is that you?"

I exchange glances with Peter. Why is it that guys at Augustine always call each other by their last names? I've never understood that.

"Just get over to the parking garage at Maguire Mall by…" Tony checks his watch, which is still set to Pacific time. "Seven o'clock. We'll all be there, and we're gonna show you what's up. It's gonna be a wild ride, too. Trust me on that."

"Anything else you can tell me?" Steve asks. "Like where are the hidden cameras?"

"Would I really lie to you, buddy?" Tony asks. "Maguire Mall, seven o'clock. Be there or be square. Yeah, I said that. You can shoot me later tonight. See you then!" He hangs up and returns the phone to Skye, then together they pick up the Iron Man arms again as the elevator drops us off in the basement.

"You think he'll be there, or be square?" Skye asks with a raised eyebrow.

"You just concentrate on gettin' us to San Cas in record time, my dear," Tony says with a rakish grin and - I can't believe I'm saying this, but there's really no other way to describe this - bedroom eyes. "Steve'll be there. He's always up for a little adventure. And, if worst comes to worst, we can always kidnap him."

"You're kidding, right?" I stare at Tony, horror-struck.

"Of course," Tony says, fixing his grin on me now. "That's the last of last resorts." He helps Skye and me load the Iron Man suit into the back of one of the SUVs - Simmons having opened it from the inside - then does one last jump into the air and a cry of "WHOO HOO!" before climbing into the backseat.