Dealing with a Teenage Squirrel Girl
Heeeeeeyyy, y'all. I'm just gonna…(Puts the chapter down) leave this for you guys here. A good chunk of words and plot, just to your liking. Now, if you all would excuse me, I'm just going to…(Starts running into the distance).
ML: You can't run away from your problems-chazu!
WATCH ME!
Disclaimer: I'm not in any way, shape, or form the owner of Marvel Comics or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If I was, why would I need to make fanfiction when I can do what I like out there on the big screen? That would be the dream…
Chapter 3: In which Tony begins to Plot and his friends try to reel him in.
"Okay," Tony began once Dorrie was safely enclosed in her new basement bedroom. "We need to discuss what the plan is."
Tony and his three friends were currently in his workshop. Even though he knew the possibility of somebody being able to bug his house was zilch, Tony didn't want to take any chances of being overheard. So after making sure his new teenage housemate was settled in, he gathered his people and told JARVIS to make sure that the entire mansion was scrubbed for anyone trying to listen in. He knew his AI would give the boot to anyone stupid enough to try.
"Plan?" Poor Happy, last one to be filled in, looked so confused as to what was going on. Tony should give him a raise for dealing with his most recent bullshit.
"Yes, we need to plan our next steps," Pepper answered him, a firm tone in her voice. She most definitely deserved a raise. "Tony, I probably don't need to ask, but could you bring up anything you can find on Dorrie or her mother?"
"Way ahead of you. JARVIS, show the lady what you found."
"Of course, sir." JARVIS pulled out one of the hologram projectors and began displaying a collage of information on it. "Doreen Allene Green. Born July 18, 1994 to Dorian Green and Maureen Green nee Atwood at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. Maureen Green, a Canadian national, had met Dorian Green several years beforehand at the University of Southern California which they both attended. They married soon after, upon which Ms. Green was born. Mrs. Green functioned as a stay at home parent while Dorian Green worked full time as an electrical engineer to support his new family."
Tony frowned. "This is the first time I'm hearing anything about Dorrie's father. Where is he?" He had noticed, even back in the park, that Dorrie only spoke about her mother but never mentioned her father. She never talked about him once when she discussed her plans for the future. Tony hoped that it was nothing too bad but he wasn't very hopeful about it.
"Unfortunately, Dorian Green suffered a workplace accident while testing out new equipment for power lines they were hoping to install. He sustained heavy second and third degree burns across his body along with heavy internal trauma from electrocution. He survived the initial accident but would later pass away from his injuries. Ms. Green was two years old at the time."
"Damn," Rhodey grimaced as they let that information settle. "Poor kid." Tony agreed. It was awful to lose a parent in such a violent manner, even if she was too young to have solid memories of him.
"Did the company he worked with give any reason for why the accident happened?" Pepper had a pinched look on her face that spoke of her displeasure if Dorian Green's death wasn't a simple random accident.
"According to the investigation that was conducted following his death, the new equipment he was testing were found with faulty wiring. From what was written in the final report, the team that was responsible for ensuring the quality was up to standard failed their duty, rushing to have the items put into use. The tools Mr. Green had used were not safe but nobody caught on to the fact until it was too late."
"Of course," Tony muttered under his breath, pulling up the report on another screen to get a closer look. Of course it was a series of human errors that led to the death of an innocent man. Some people just can't help themselves and want to rush for the prize, ignoring whoever might end up as collateral damage in the process. He's had to fire several people with that kind of attitude."What happened afterwards?" he prompted Jarvis to continue.
"Once the investigation was concluded, it was determined that the fault lies with the company as the equipment should not only have been properly inspected, the workers should have attended to their duty with more consideration. With that in mind, a settlement was paid to the Green family. A portion of the money from the settlement was used by Mrs. Green to fund their move from Los Angeles with her daughter."
"I can understand that," Rhodey muttered. "Moving away from the place that led to a lot of pain. Her husband dying and being left a single mother more than likely kicked off some feelings of resentment towards Dorrie. But this is just the beginning of it all. What happened once it was just Dorrie and her mother?"
"I'm looking through their public records," Tony browsed through the information he was quickly pulling up. "And it looks like the two of them moved around a lot."
Happy took a look over Tony's shoulder. "They started living in Glendale for a couple of months, then they moved to Silver Lake, then Eagle Rock, before they finally stayed put in Atwater Village." Happy narrowed his eyes as he took in the information. "All of this going on within two to three years. Makes you wonder exactly why they kept moving from place to place?"
"I can take a wild guess," Tony muttered. When his friends looked at him to explain further, he continued. "Let's paint a picture. I'm a young woman living my best life. I have a husband with a good job, a little girl to care for, pretty much living the American dream. But then tragedy happens. The man that I believed I would spend the rest of my life with is now gone. Suddenly, I'm left with a toddler to raise on my own, separated from my relatives in another country."
Tony took a moment to allow what he said to settle in. "It's bad enough that I'm left raising a kid all on my own. But then things start to get weird. My kid is suddenly stronger than the other children. She's faster than them. She can climb up things like nobody's business. All of these things start piling up and people are now looking at you weird."
"You would need an out," Rhodey concluded, obviously reaching the same conclusions as Tony. "You need to get out of the area before questions start being asked. Questions that you don't have any answers for, at least not any good ones."
"Right. So, you pack up and move to a new neighborhood. And for some time, everything is going well. But then your daughter's abilities act up again. She did something that you can't cover up, so you have to move again. And again. And again."
Pepper frowned, her eyebrows furrowing. "Having to constantly move around the state, watching out for people who would either look too closely at your history or the incidents involving your daughter."
"Exactly," Tony grimly noted, pulling up more records onto the screens. "Looking at the financial records, the constant moves took a good chunk out of the settlement payment they were given. Explains how they ended up living in Atwater. Not to mention most of the population came from out of the country, so they wouldn't ask too many questions of her. So that's where they settled."
"And that's where she was finally able to express that pent up resentment she had," Happy concluded. His face was screwed up into an expression of anger and indignation. "How the hell did she think it was right to do that to her kid?"
Tony began typing away again. "Who knows what she thought about it. The main problem now is getting Dorrie out of her custody."
"Well, you have some good reasoning for why Dorrie should be removed," Pepper said. "Dorrie said that she had been living out of Griffith Park for over two months at this point. From what we have already found out, her mother likely hasn't put in a missing person's report. That is already a red flag."
Tony agreed with her. "A bright red, crimson flag. But that's not all. I looked further into their records and it looks like Dorrie was never taken to any type of medical professional in nearly four years."
"Nobody?"
"Nope. No pediatrician, no dentist, no optometrist, nothing. I can guess that once the tail grew in, she didn't bother taking her to anyone that would look her over and raise some kind of alarm. I can kind of see the need for it, again the tail. But her vaccination records are spotty, which really, all that's needed for a shot is to roll up your sleeve. And it's not like some kind of alarm would go off if she had her daughter's eyes and teeth looked at."
"All of this is boiling down to what we are already aware of," Rhodey said. "Doreen, up until a few months ago, had been living in a severely neglectful environment. Her mother has shown that she couldn't care less what happens to her daughter. There's no way that a judge, when presented with this evidence, would ever consider leaving Doreen in her custody."
Rhodey was right, as Tony knew his best friend had a solid habit of being. However-
"There's still the problem of keeping people from finding out the kid's a mutant," Happy chimed in. "Hell, what's stopping the mom from blurting it out to get herself out of trouble?"
A tense silence followed the question. That is a possibility as much as he didn't like it. Tony certainly believed that Mrs. Green would be petty enough to make that secret known. She wouldn't care how much damage it would do to her daughter's life when she had already cut herself out of Dorrie's life so completely.
Tony could see it now. The unrepentant bitch would shout out to anyone who would listen how she had no choice once her daughter began to change. How she had to do all she could to protect herself as Doreen displayed physical feats beyond her capabilities. That she needed to be firm in what Doreen was allowed to do, to protect the rest of the public from what her daughter could do to them. She would cry how her own child was a danger to society and the public would eat it up. Who cared that Doreen was just a child? She was a mutant and that automatically made her lesser in the eyes of the government.
Yeah, that absolutely wasn't happening. Not on Tony's watch.
"I think Mrs. Green and I need to have a small…discussion. To impress upon the consequences of her current decisions and any future ones." Tony turned his attention back to the screens in front of him.
His tone of voice was noticed immediately by his friends. "Tony, you are not going to go out and threaten Maureen Green," Pepper immediately told him.
"And why the hell shouldn't I?"
"Because if you do so, it can be used as a mark against your credibility to take Dorrie in," Pepper explained. And wasn't that a swift damper on his plans. "She could use the fact that you threatened her, whether it was with physical violence or not, to mark you as unstable."
Tony looked at her in surprise. "And all of my other actions within this year alone doesn't make me look unstable?" Tony could give a detailed list, complete with annotations and cited sources, for why he would be the poster boy for unstable, just tottering on the edge of landing on the side of psychosis. And that's just from this year alone, never mind looking into his childhood issues or the hurricane of alcohol and drugs that were his twenties.
Try as he might, Tony could feel some slivers of anxiety creeping up slowly in his subconscious. It wasn't enough to show on his face but he knew that it was only a matter of time.
Pepper's lips twitched faintly. Likely she found amusement in his flailing. "Yes, your history will be something that the authorities will look into while discussing custody arrangements. But they will also look into the new direction you are turning towards now."
"She's right," Rhodey said. "You've turned Stark Industries from just a weapons company and plan on expanding it to several new fields, including tech and health care. You're not partying as much as you did before, nor are you drinking like you used to. Though you may want to consider cutting down some more. Or maybe even go sober."
Happy nodded in agreement. "And that's not even going into the whole Iron Man thing. You turned yourself into a literal superhero, Boss. People only ever read about them in comic books and here you are, flying around fighting crime."
"I don't want being a superhero to mean I should automatically have custody," Tony protested. That was not what he created Iron Man for. Iron Man was meant to be a way for him to take responsibility for the way he allowed his weapons to be abused and doing nothing to ensure it didn't happen. That was why he exposed his identity in the first place, to ensure he would always be held accountable.
"We know that, but think about how other people see it. You came back from being tortured for three months. Most people would never want to leave their bedroom again, let alone their houses. But here you are, hitting up terrorist bases around the world and helping people that you'll never see again, expecting nothing. That..that says a lot, Boss."
Tony pursed his lips. There were some days, like Happy described, where the thought of bringing himself into the outside world leaves him with a rushing surge of anxiety. He would think about how easy it would be for someone to come up and damage the arc reactor, even a taser with a high enough voltage would be enough. Tony would wake up in bed, gasping, feeling like he was choking on dirty water even though he was on dry land. He would lay there, sweat soaking into his sheets, and wondered if he could just barricade himself in his workshop.
("This is your magnum opus," Obadiah whispered into his ear as he ripped his artificial heart from his chest.)
But Tony's thoughts would then move to Yinsen. This man, who had lost everything dear to him, was held against his will and forced to help the men who killed his family. Yet he didn't allow his despair to consume him, and had even gone out of his way to prop Tony up when he believed his fate was to die in that desert.
Don't waste your life. Those were the last words Yinsen said to him. And he was going to do his best to live up to them.
"If I may interject Sir," JARVIS popped back into the conversation. " I find myself in agreement with Miss Potts, Colonel Rhodes, and Mr. Hogan. Even though your past behavior leaves something to be desired, it is readily apparent that you are doing all that you can to take responsibility for your actions and improve yourself. You are aware, through unfortunate means, the affliction of being left with hardly any options to be able to save yourself. While Ms. Green's situation is not so severe she too, was left with next to no options in order to survive on her own." Jarvis' voice, by the end, had adopted a tone filled with deep fondness for his creator. "You understand and are making it your goal to ensure Ms. Green never experiences that desperation. No matter what, that is a noble thing to do."
Tony listened to JARVIS speak with increasing emotion, torn between embarrassment towards what his creation was saying about him and buoyant at how much JARVIS followed his train of thought. It was a little scary, sometimes, how much the AI could read him but Tony mostly found it comforting. At least when JARVIS wasn't using it against him.
"And don't forget that you have us to fall back on," Pepper reminded him.
Tony took a deep breath and let it out. Okay. Okay. "Alright. Nice to know that I have your seal of approval," he joked. He wasn't going to try and dissect the mushy feelings those series of speeches gave him. Nope. "But I'm going to need more than that if I want any chance to have Dorrie stay with me instead of some orphanage." Or back to her mother. Or somewhere even worse.
"I'll send a message to the SI legal department first thing in the morning about emergency foster care placement," Pepper stated, beginning to type away on her phone. Likely drafting the email to send to the lawyers.
"I have taken the liberty of compiling a list of requirements that are needed in order to become a foster parent in the state of California, sir." JARVIS helpfully started pulling up various web pages on several screens. Tony made out phrases like "training on the needs of children" and "home environment assessment", resisting the urge to cringe at the sight of them. This was important. He wasn't going to let his issues stop him from helping this kid who had no one else on her side except for a god damn squirrel.
It was going to be a long night of planning.