(Barely) Controlled Chaos # 15

(Barely) Controlled Chaos # 15

Ok, so, in short, flu sucks and work eats my time.  But I'm alive, so here, have some more fic :)

Warnings for this part: none, but spot the cameo ;)

September 1997, Stark Industries Main office, New York

Pepper Potts was an angel from heaven, and Tony was having her canonised.  She’d rolled her eyes at him when he’d made that declaration, but he’d written it down on a memo with Stark Industries letterheads, therefore it was now official and had to happen.  Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that part of Pepper’s job now was sorting all the paperwork.

She had screwed the memo up and tossed it over her shoulder onto her Charmeleon’s lap, who promptly fried it to ashes.  Tony was tempted to mime being mortally wounded, but Ruby, the Charmeleon, gave him the evil eye, and he didn’t quite dare risk it.  Pepper may be sporting a halo and white feathery wings, but Ruby quite literally had horns and a tail, breathed fire, and apparently hated his guts.  Tony knew why she felt like that, but still felt it was unfair; what happened had been Dummy’s fault, not his.  And hey, Pepper was talking to him, so why the dragon felt the need to blow smoke at him every time he so much as breathed in Pepper’s direction, he didn’t know.  Whatever, Tony wasn’t stupid enough to pick a fight with the Pokémon.

Back to Pepper.  Homicidal dragon aside, his new PA was a full-fledged, halo-bearing angel of the lord, and Tony was considering giving up atheism just on the evidence of Pepper alone.  She had come into his life literally

I find that, when writing bios, it’s really helpful to look at a list or a chart like the one above. Picking two or three traits from each chart and building a character based around them will give you a really interesting bio, because they will serve as a reminder that characters need depth and dimension.

Independent and clever.

VS.

Independent, clever, pretentious, and stubborn.

The first combination doesn’t come with any flaws, whereas the second will provide a more dynamic character.

(Barely) Controlled Chaos # 19

Follows on from last part, so read that first.

Warnings for this part: violence, attempted mugging, weaponry, drunkeness

September 1997, Stark Industries Main office, New York

Tony pulled the girls against a wall, taking the hard surface against his own back while they writhed against his front, and grinned into their mouths.  Three hands grabbed against his stomach, sliding under his shirt, and another pulled at his hair.  He moaned at the sensation.

That was when the cold click of a gun being cocked ruined Tony’s night.

All three of them stopped moving instantly, the hands against his skin freezing in place, nails digging into his ribcage as the fingers formed an involuntary fist.  The barrel of the gun poked between the girl’s heads, pointed at Tony’s nose.  One of the brunettes squeaked in fear.  Tony wasn’t sure if he wished they would scream or not; it would draw attention from the two fucking huge bouncers just up the road, but it also might startle the guy on the other end of the gun, and Tony did not want that.  He liked his face the way it was, it didn’t need a hole between his eyes.

The man pushed one of the girls away from Tony, further into the alleyway, and she fell against the brick wall with a small cry.  Tony bit his lip as the gun pressed flush against his forehead, lifting his hands away from the other girl to show that he was unarmed.  The gun pressed harder against him, and he froze.

“Whoa, easy…”

“Shut up,” the gunman ordered, voice low in what was probably an attempt to not draw attention from the bouncers.  He used his free hand to pull the other girl towards him; she screamed, but he snapped the gun under her chin, and she muffled the noise quickly.  He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pressed his free hand across her lips.  “Not a sound, bitch.”

She nodded, and the gun returned to its previous position.  Tony pressed closer against the wall, which was currently the only thing holding him upright.  Alcohol plus far too much adrenaline was making his knees shake, and also appeared to have gotten his fight-or-flight response stuck on ‘oh-shit-this-is-bad’.

Muffled whimpers from the two girls, and the tear tracks running down their faces told Tony that they were in the same position.  At least it wasn’t just him.

The gunman was talking again.  Tony tried to pay attention, uncrossing his eyes from their focus on the end of the gun and looking at the man beyond.  It was dark, and Tony was very drunk and scared, so he made out dark hair and pale skin, but that was about it.  Damnit.  He hated being fuzzy on details.  He forced his eyes to focus, and saw the man’s mouth moving.

Right, he was talking.  What was he saying?

“…money, now!”

Of course.  He was Howard fucking Stark’s son; everybody and their dog knew who he was, and they all knew he was a billionaire.  He really should have expected this.  Thinking about it, he was kind of surprised he hadn’t been mugged before.

“Now!”

Tony flinched, then winced as the movement knocked his skull against the wall.  He reached down to his jeans pocket, trying to remember which one his wallet was in, when the little light filtering into the alley from the main road suddenly cut off.  The gunman turned his attention in that direction, and the gun lowered an inch.  Tony sucked in a breath and shot his gaze sideways.  He couldn’t see properly – there was a gun blocking a lot of his view – but he thought he recognised the blurry shape as one of the bouncers from the nightclub.  He really hoped it was, and that this wasn’t some kind of backup for the mugger.

“Want to back up there?” the newcomer asked, tone light, and Tony knew that voice; it was the bouncer who’d wished him a good night.  His knees folded in relief, and he slid to the floor, the wall no longer adequate enough to keep him upright.  He was a little busy being relieved and staring at the floor to follow exactly what happened next, but a high-pitched scream caught his attention, and he looked up to see the bouncer supporting the girl that had been held hostage with one arm while holding the gunman against the wall with the other.  The gun was on the floor by Tony’s feet.  The girl to his right burst into noisy tears; Tony felt quite like joining her, but wasn’t quite drunk enough to give in to the impulse.

Another bouncer joined their rescuer, taking the gunman off his hands, and the first bouncer sat the girl he was holding on the floor next to Tony so he could call the police.  She curled against his side and cried into his shoulder, the other girl crawling up against his other side and burying her head in his lap, tears soaking into his jeans.  Tony sighed and let his head fall back against the wall, closing his eyes as the adrenaline flushed from his system, leaving him exhausted.

『25 Lives』 by Tongari (ಌ)

This is beautiful

(Barely) Controlled Chaos #5

Follows on directly from part 4

Warnings for this part: none

November 1991, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Every day for the next week, Rhodes joined him on the bench and they threw their lunches to the birds.  The Taillow came back day after day, getting brave enough to sit on the bench and wait for them, even sitting on Tony’s shoulder and taking food from his hand.  Tony grinned at that, and Rhodes grinned back at him, and maybe he had a friend now.  They talked to each other like friends; Tony a little more reserved to begin with, because he still wasn’t sure that this wasn’t some kind of trick, but Rhodes joked and complained with him, and he didn’t seem to care that Tony was Tony Stark, son of a billionaire weapons developer.  By the end of the week, Tony had called him ‘Rhodey’, which had made the older boy pull a face and complain, so naturally that became his new name.  Rhodey called him ‘Tones’ in response, which Tony hated but also kind of loved at the same time, because even his father had never given him a nickname beyond ‘Tony’, and that wasn’t a nickname, that was because ‘Anthony’ took too long to say.

So, yeah, Tony had a friend.  Two, if he counted Taillow, which he was starting to. (One more day…)

The following week, Tony was sitting on their bench, hand-feeding Taillow crumbs of a cake that Jarvis had made and had delivered to him, when Rhodey came up to him with a penguin Pokémon in tow.  It was just tall enough to rest against Rhodey’s thigh, two ridges running along its head resting either side of his leg.  Tony smiled at them both and waved at the Pokémon, which regarded him coolly.  Rhodey rested a hand on its head.

“Tones, this is Pippi.  He’s a Prinplup; we grew up together.  Pippi, this is Tony.”

Pippi gave a low chirp and leaned closer to Rhodey.  The Taillow on Tony’s shoulder chirped back and hopped onto the bench to inspect the newcomer.  Rhodey managed to manoeuvre so that he could sit down, and grinned at Tony.

“He doesn’t usually come out the dorm; he doesn’t like people much, but the weather is starting to get colder and there’s a chance it might rain later, so he agreed to come meet you.”

Tony blinked.  Those two weather conditions were usually considered bad things by most people, but he supposed that from a penguin’s point of view, it was just what he’d want.  He shrugged and nodded.

“Hi, Pippi.”

Pippi ignored him; he was eye-to-eye with Taillow and Tony wasn’t sure what to make of the situation.  Rhodey didn’t seem too worried by it, so he relaxed and offered some of his sandwich to the penguin.  Taillow stole it, then hopped onto the other Pokémon’s head and ate it, chirping.  Rhodey laughed.

“Made a friend, Pip?”

Pippi flapped his wings and took the fish Rhodey offered him.  “Do you have any Pokémon?” he asked Tony casually, pulling his own lunch from his bag.  Tony felt his mood drop and shrugged, eyeing Taillow surreptitiously.

“My mother had a Persian, but it died a few years ago.”  That seemed a safe thing to say, and it didn’t invite a whole host of questions either.  Tony didn’t feel like explaining the aversion that all living things seemed to have to him, Rhodey excepted.

“I’m sorry,” Rhodey said, sounding it, and patted Pippi on the beak.  Taillow jumped onto Rhodey’s hand and flapped its wings.  He smiled at it and scratched the top of its head with the pad of his index finger.  “But hey, maybe something’ll come along.”

Tony nodded and changed the topic; he couldn’t tell you what they’d spent the rest of their time discussing, because he was too busy trying not to look at the way Taillow was flitting between Rhodey and Pippi, and when they stood up as Rhodey’s next class started, the way Taillow went with them, riding on the Prinplup’s head.  Tony smiled, because its wasn’t Rhodey’s fault that Pokémon didn’t like him, so he wished his friend a good day, then as soon as they were out of sight the blew off the rest of his classes, locked himself in the robotics lab and made unnecessary repairs to Dummy’s arm, stroking the bot and feeling sorry for himself.  The robot flexed its claw and tilted its camera to one side, then whirred and bent over Tony in what it probably intended as a hug.  Tony closed his eyes patted it.

“At lease I’ve got you, Dummy,” he whispered.  The bot whistled and hugged him tighter.

(Barely) Controlled Chaos #10

Follows on directly from last part; make sure you read that one first.

Warnings for this part: none

May 1992, Stark Industries Research and Development plant, New York

They ended up in the chief engineer’s office, where Obie tried to get Tony interested in the new weapons the man had designed.  Tony looked over the blueprints, which the engineer talked about proudly, then put Lillipup down on the man’s desk and pointed at the trigger mechanism on the first schematic.

“That won’t work.”

The man stuttered, his speech drawing to a halt, and Obie raised an eyebrow at Tony.

“What makes you think that?”

“It’s not connected properly.  Look.”

The engineer sneered at Tony, but obediently leaned over the blueprint.  “You have a bit to learn about actually putting things together, young Stark, because you’re wrong; see here, this is connected to…”  the man stopped mid-ramble and blinked.  Tony smirked.

“Yes?”

“Err, nothing; it’s a preliminary design; not important…”

Obie looked between the two, then settled his gaze on the engineer.  “Is he right?”

The man’s hesitation was answer enough.  Tony grinned at him, smug.  Obie’s gaze turned dark.

“Wait here, Tony; I need to have a word with our worker in private.”

The engineer paled, but followed Obie out of his office and shut the door.  Left alone, Tony shrugged and looked at the other blueprints, pulled a pencil from a mug on the desk and made annotations to improve the designs, feeling smug.  He ignored the raised voices from the corridor, but looked up from a rather rude comment on the third schematic when Lillipup let out a low bark.  The Pokémon had jumped from the desk onto the floor, and was peering underneath the furniture, hindquarters up in the air and back arched so his chin rested on the floor.  He yipped again, and Tony let the pencil fall onto the desk.

“What is it, buddy?”

Lillipup looked up, then pawed at the space under the desk and whined.  Tony knelt down and looked under the desk, wondering what the Pokémon had seen.  He often found spiders, but he didn’t draw them to Tony’s attention, so it couldn’t be that, but the gap was too narrow to be anything much bigger.

Tony squinted into the dim gap, spotting an obstruction under there, but not able to make out what it was.  He looked back at Lillipup.  “What is it?”

Lillipup barked again, and the thing under the desk moved.  Tony jumped and flinched back as Obie opened the office door.  The man frowned when he saw Tony on the floor.

“You alright, Tony?”

Tony nodded.  “Fine.  Lillipup saw something.”

“Something?”

Tony shrugged, then froze when the thing under the desk emerged.  It was pink and gooey, and it had eyes and a mouth, which made it either a Pokémon that had sneaked into the building or some kind of experiment that had gained sentience, and if it was the latter Tony was getting out of there right now.  Behind him, Obie sighed.

“Ditto.  They sneak in sometimes; it’s warm in here.  I’ll get rid of it.”

So, it was a Pokémon.  Tony immediately felt better about it being all but on his lap.  Obie stepped forward, and the Pokémon actually did slither onto Tony’s knees, making Lillipup growl quite threateningly at it.  Ditto froze for a moment, then went solid and changed shape and colour.  Tony kept very still, not sure what was going on, and then there was a Lillipup sat on his lap where the Ditto had been, and suddenly its name made sense.  The real Lillipup barked, tilting his head to one side.  Ditto copied him.  Tony found himself grinning at the display.

Obie leaned down to pick the Ditto up, muttering something about ‘finding a way to keep the things out of the damned building’, but Tony leaned forward and shielded the Pokémon from his reach.

“No, it’s ok.  I’ll take care of it.”

Ditto curled into Tony’s stomach, and stuck its tongue out at Obie.  Tony snickered, making Ditto lick his chin, and Lillipup growled again.  Tony scratched him behind the ear.

The chief engineer was standing outside his office, looking nervous.  Tony moved the Ditto so he was cradling it in his arms and stood up, gesturing at the blueprints with a nod.  “I corrected your drawings.”

The engineer looked like he wanted to cry, but settled for nodding and muttering a ‘thank you’ that Tony ignored.  Obie rolled his eyes and stepped aside so Tony could get out of the room, Lillipup following and glaring at everyone.  Obie growled another threat at the engineer and guided Tony and the Pokémon towards the exit of the building.  As soon as they got outside, Obie gestured at the Ditto still in Tony’s arms.

“Get rid of that thing.”

Ditto stuck its tongue out at him again, turning back into its original jelly-form and crawling up Tony’s chest to sit on his shoulder, resting against his neck.  Tony patted it gently, and it made a happy-sounding noise in his ear.  He smiled.

“I like it.”

Lillipup barked, and Tony chuckled and bent down, catching the puppy as it jumped into his arms.  “I like you too.”

Lillipup licked his nose, then sniffed at Ditto under his chin.  There was no angry squealing or barking, and a few seconds later the dog settled quite happily into his hold, so Tony guessed they were sorting out a hierarchy or something.  Obie’s eyes rolled heavenward.

“What am I going to do with you, Tony?” he asked, and Tony didn’t think he was just talking about the Ditto.  He tried not to be hurt by the comment, shrugging the shoulder that didn’t have a passenger and giving his standard flippant response.

“Let me go on my date?”

Obie paused for a second, then sighed and turned his back.

“The driver will take you back to the airport, but I want you in regular contact, you hear me Tony?  This is your company, whether you want it or not, and you have to be involved.”

Tony nodded, paying very little attention, and climbed into the limo that was still waiting for him.  Ditto and Lillipup both settled in his lap, looking quite content to be there, and Tony felt a smile stretch his face as he carefully poked the pink blob on his knee.  It twitched and then poked him back.  He laughed.

Ok, so maybe this was worth missing his date.