nextgenerationmarvel | Fallout, Part I

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Fallout, Part I

After Blood Force had fled away from the Imaginauts, the team returned to Pier 4. Jacob disappeared to put his rocky hide into hiding, smarting from being controlled and made to attack his teammate. Remi had picked something out of the sand after the villains left and took it with him back to base.

Tony Stark had noticed three pings of StarkTech suits in use in North Carolina. Two of the pings disappeared as they headed inland. The third suit made its way to New York City and Pier 4 in particular.

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"Do I look like I want to bring down upon myself the wrath of Bethany Cabe? I'll tell her when I'm in labor so she can be distracted by a cute baby. I'm crazy. I'm not suicidal."

Alexa cleared a few things off an extra chair and motioned for her dad to sit down before she sat down herself.

"So what's got you aggravated and peeved?"

"Right, well, if she finds out beforehand, you should know I'm going into hiding until the due date." Because, somehow, this would be his fault. It was just the way things worked.

He took the proffered seat and crossed his legs at the ankles, stretching them out comfortably as he watched her thoughtfully. "Had some interesting blips on my security system today. Seems several unauthorized Stark tech pieces were hanging out in North Carolina today. Anything you want to tell me...?"

Alexa snorted at the idea of Tony going into hiding. She was pretty sure he already had plans to do so the second she had the baby. Somehow, Alexa was pretty certain that he hadn't come around the concept of being a grandfather. He still had paternal hiccups as it was. She pursed her lips for a moment at that thought then shook her head.

"We had a little run-in with some transdimensional psychopaths this afternoon. One of them had a suit, but I pretty much bricked it for her. I would have done more, but it had integrated with her body and I'm only about half as homicidal as people think I am."

Yeah, the whole 'grandfather' thing was going to take a lot longer than nine months to get used to. He was too young and too attractive to be a grandfather, damn it. He was also far too young to be killed in the crossfire when Bethany found out.

"One suit? I counted three unidentified signatures..."

"One suit." Alexa's brow furrowed for a moment as she tried to account for the other two signatures. Her eyes landed on her phone.

"Oh, well. I had my phone. That might count. I made some modifications."

"Modifications?" That was more along the lines of what he wanted to hear. Part of him was suitably impressed with Alexa's skill and ability... and part of him wanted to curse a lot. He still wasn't sure which side was going to win out in this instance. "Such as...?"

"Such as this."

Alexa held out her hand and tapped her thumb against her index, middle, and ring finger and as she did the phone came alive, splitting apart and wrapping up her arm from hand to shoulder in thin armor with a thin bit along the side of her face to serve as a heads up display.

"Impressive." It was; there was no question about that. Tony quirked an eyebrow as his gaze traveled from the armor to meet her eyes. "Were you planning to tell me about this at some point?"

"It's very thin, but extremely strong," she said as she allowed the armor to retract. "The only real drawback is that it requires some small implants to work as it is coded precisely to the wearer, but it's really not that much of a drawback."

She arched a brow at Tony.

"Once it was completed and ready to be used? Yes. Today was an unscheduled test."

Patience. He had to keep reminding himself to be patient. The only thing losing his temper would get him is a face full of angry, pregnant, redhead. At this point in his life, he knew better. So, rather than going with his first instinct to yell, he decided to try explaining.

Who says he didn't learn anything from divorce?

"I meant that you were building it at all." He didn't like to talk about private matters, especially anything to do with Iron Man, outside of his own private office or home, but if anywhere else was going to be safe enough, he supposed it was here. "I'm not opposed to you doing it and I'm prouder than I can describe that you're capable and savvy enough to do it on your own, but this... Iron Man, that legacy... it's one of the most important things in the world to me. If there's anything done with it, I want to know about it. Not be surprised by it."

"And someday, it will be your legacy. Yours, Misha's, your kids, his... but, right now, today, it's still my baby."

Alexa sat there for a long, eerily still and silent moment, but though her body didn't move her mind raced. Each of his words slipped their way into the avenues of her brain as she processed them. For a moment, from Alexa's perspective, time froze.

How long had she been chasing his approval? Forever, it seemed, even before she had known that Tony Stark was her father and not just the billionaire genius Iron Man. How many letters had she slipped into the mail as a kid, address to him at Stark Industries? They had all been filed with childish sketches of ideas she'd had for various forms of tech. Bethany had been furious when she'd busted her for that. And then...she'd met him. And knew that he was her father. Her dad. Love me, she'd thought. Be happy I exist. Accept me. Be proud of me. Everything she did in a lab or in the shop from that instant forward had one primary goal, spoken or unspoken: to earn approval from Tony Stark. (Secondary goals of "be cool" and "do awesome shit" were pretty big, too.) She thought that, with this, she would get close.

She had been wrong.

Her brown eyes closed a moment, she breathed deeply, and then opened them again.

"You are all ego, Mr. Stark. You didn't invent the concept of armor."

She got up, slowly, picked up a the reassembled phone and used the tip of her soldering iron to smash its glass face before sweeping the device into a trash bin.

"The device only pinged as Stark Tech because I used surplus sheet vibranium for the body and two nano circuits you let me have because sourcing the vibranium is a little difficult to get in such a small quantity and the nano circuits were part of a power test to see if the circuit I created operated at different capacity. The receptors in my fingertips, the operating system, the individual folding latches that snaps the sheeting into place, even the type of wire are all creations of my invention. You can look at the plans at your leisure."

She dropped a notebook into the trash can, pulled the bag out, tied it in a knot, and sat it at his feet.

"I made the parental assumption that one would their daughter to have some sort of protection in a world where she faces legitimate threat from extra terrestrials, demons, the occasional cross-dimensional psycho, and run of the mill villain. I thought a lightweight armor might be a good idea. Next time I will opt for Kevlar. Enjoy your baby."

She sat back down, her voice having never once raised, spread her hand out on the table, and started looking for the receptors she had imbedded in her fingertips.

As he listened to her rant, Tony went from startled, to confused, to resigned. There had never been any question in his mind that he wasn't meant to be a father. He certainly had never had anything in the neighborhood of a role model for it. Not a good one, anyway. Still, he thought he'd been doing okay... making progress.

Apparently not.

When Alexa sat back down and stopped talking, he finally spoke up. "If you're finished blowing my small request entirely out of proportion?"

Without waiting for her to answer, he went on. "I didn't deserve that. All I asked was to be informed. I didn't say I didn't want you doing it. I said I was proud of you and your ability. I'm proud of the design you developed. I'm glad it protected you."

He stood up and stepped around the bag she'd laid at his feet. That wasn't what he'd been looking for at all. "You're my daughter and I care about you. God knows I'm nobody's idea of an ideal father... I'm a fuck up on all levels of being and I know that, but I've been trying and I'm sorry that one comment from me can apparently cause you to disregard everything else I've done or said."

"I'll see myself out."

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Fallout, Part I

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