nextgenerationmarvel | Sometimes Unexpected News Isn't Bad News? (Marcelo)

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Sometimes Unexpected News Isn't Bad News? (Marcelo)

"You'll forgive me, but I'm rather surprised to hear from you, Mr. Rosenthal." Stephanie replied after picking up the phone, expecting the call to have something to do with some unfinished bureaucratic process, or perhaps some regulator asking questions about why she'd been dismissed from the board. It was surprising when the next thing he insisted was for her to call him 'Ben'. What she'd heard next absolutely floored her.

"... you what?" She paused for a moment and spoke into the phone. "Ben. I'm flattered, and you know that I do want it, but Sebastian will kill you if he finds out you've been in touch with me like this, let alone to offer me a seat back. You have kids and a grandchild." But she didn't hang up, she couldn't even if she wanted to. She remembered Ben Rosenthal as a fairly mild-mannered man, but she heard a righteous anger in his voice when he spoke. He didn't know what exactly Sebastian had done to them, but he'd clearly influenced their minds. She imagined that such a thing would be especially offensive to a man who had loyally backed her father through thick and thin.

"You'll forgive me, Stephanie, but I've also taken the liberty of getting in contact with your husband, through quiet channels. Allow me to be very clear about this. We want Sebastian Shaw out of our lives, and out of the company that we spent our lives building- that he is <i>destroying</i> with his personal grudges. Something that he would never have done in the past. The news hasn't come out publicly yet, but the last quarter was ... pretty dire for us. Sebastian's lost a lot of his old political influence and the loss of the Veridian accounts hurt us more than we thought it would. We're virtually shut out of Latin America entirely now, and the Europeans are too broke for us."

Rosenthal paused for a moment. "Maybe we've been King's Men too long. If you or your husband or any of your allies can give us reasonable assurance that Sebastian won't be able to personally target us, we will give you the company. Maybe we would do better with a Queen. It seems the Hellfire Club has been thinking similarly."

After the conversation ended, Stephanie set down the phone and texted Marcelo immediately.

"Have you heard from a Mr Rosenthal?"

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[Good.]

Stephanie busied herself in the meantime ushering her guest into the house. Which involved providing more than a little support. For all of her dignity, it was clear she was nursing some fairly heavy injuries.

She could wait and wonder why she'd come here later, or the weird situation of dealing with someone's clone. But as far as she could tell, this woman was just another of her father's victims.

The last one, perhaps. He's got far too much blood on his hands.

She wondered, though, if Sebastian was following her. She did have a line to the X-Men, but she'd only use that if she truly knew the situation was utterly desperate. They'd done a lot for her, and she didn't really want to be further in their debt if she could help it.

Being the boss meant he could leave work easily with little explanation. He'd been there quite regularly since returning from his honeymoon. He got out of Veridian's New York offices easily and drove home as quickly as his new dark green Tesla Roadster would legally drive.

Traffic was thankfully not horrible, so he got home in a decent time. No Shaw jumped out of the parking garage shadows to rip him in half. He took the private elevator up to the penthouse.

He unlocked the front door and stepped in. "Querida?"

He quickly shut the door before a Sancho tried escaping.

"Hi." Stephanie replied as she met him at the door, giving him a quick kiss because she needed it, like she needed oxygen. It would be soon enough that he'd see Tessa, as she called herself, sitting on the couch, trying to maintain her dignity and posture, though currently there was a rather large cat trying to make her acquaintance.

She was clearly favoring one side, though, and there was a ugly blotch covering a sizable portion of her face. However scared she might have been on the inside, though, she didn't show any of it now.

Stephanie looked at Marcelo. "You have doctors we can contact quietly, yes?"

"Olá." He slipped an arm around her waist as she gave him that quick kiss. Everything was warmer and safer with her within an arm's length.

He glanced toward the living room and frowned a little at the state of their visitor. Also, how much the clone looked like Sage. It was a slightly weird experience.

He nodded slowly. "The one who patched me up after the last assassin will make a house call."

With enough money paid to the free clinic, Marcelo thought it wouldn't be hard to get one of the doctors there to look at this Tessa.

"I apologize for the intrusion." Tessa spoke up, finally, a crisp tone artfully and almost wholly disguising what was, truly, a great deal of pain. "And I thank you for your assistance. I know it must be strange, seeing as you employ my original, Mr. da Silva."

"Sebastian is very aware that his empire is collapsing around him. He does not have many friends left- I expect Selene will take care of Fitzroy in some manner shortly, and as for me- I appear to have been created with some marginal sense of self-preservation.

I will give you everything I have regarding his location and activities, as well as the account numbers of his secret assets. In exchange for two things. Protection, and the provision of some manner of worthwhile employment after this."

She looked significantly at both Marcelo and Stephanie.

It was quite a lot to take in, even for her. It was vaguely amusing to her that Sancho was immediately trying to befriend this person whom he'd never met- he'd never make a worthwhile guard cat. But there were far more serious things to be focusing on.

As for what Tessa was saying, it all seemed reasonable enough, though she wanted to know what Marcelo thought about it as well. They were in it together.

"I'd like to speak for a moment to Marcelo first." Stephanie replied. "And I assure you, if you attempt telepathy, I will find out and I will not be pleased. Respecting that privacy, on the other hand, might go some way towards establishing trust."

After all, Stephanie didn't know her as anything but a clone that was created to serve her father. "I expect you'll stay right here. We won't be long." She looked meaningfully to Marcelo. "The storage room." She hoped he realized which one she meant. The one where only telepathy would have any chance of 'listening in' on them.

Before they disappeared to the safety of that protected room, Marcelo had to say something. Because he stupidly noble but still very cautious about a situation that had tried to kill him multiple times.

"If Shaw did that to you, I can offer protection at the very least. But my wife and I still need to discuss this. Please, make yourself as comfortable as you can on the couch. We'll be back."

Stephanie absolutely loved her husband. He really was a kinder soul than her, though she felt similarly. She wasn't going to abandon anyone her bastard father harmed. She went with Marcelo into the protected room and looked at him.

"... we have two things in that room. First, information that could let us take down that bastard of a father of mine for good." She paused for a moment.

"There's also a scared, hurt young woman. She can't help being a clone, Marcelo. And who knows what he's done to her." She took a breath. "And the coldhearted pragmatist in my head says that she's also useful, well beyond that."

Once they were in the room, Marcelo put up a silence bubble around them. It was the best he could do in the triple redundant way of not being overheard.

He rubbed his chin and shook his head. His hand dropped away from his face.

"I won't even pretend to understand the complexities of what a clone of the woman who helps me run my part of the company means. I just..." He scratched an eyebrow. "... have no idea how to handle that situation. Outside of talking to Sage as soon as I can. But I have a good idea of Sage's skillset. If this Tessa is anything similar, it's a boon to whatever company will have her."

He took a breath. "If you get back control of your company, I guess she could be a valuable right hand. Or I could talk to my father and get Sage's... sister? Cousin? I don't know. Anyway, a job at Veridian in Brazil. Possibly one of the branches my cousins run. Or for my father as he's impressed I managed to hire Sage."

Marcelo had not nor would likely ever to be able to tell his father Sage hunted him down for a job. The more pluses he had in the win column, the more likely he'd get to stay in the States with his wife and work for Veridian here.

"There is probably nobody in the world who is more skilled, aside from possibly Sage." Stephanie replied. "My father relied upon her, enormously, and in days gone by- he respected her. Trusted her. And trust for a man like my father, even back then, is not a thing that comes readily."

She took a breath. "She would make a valuable right hand, for Shaw Industries, but also for the project of building a mutant community. She already knows the corporate side of things. It wouldn't be difficult for her to learn the rest of it."

She couldn't help but smile faintly. "I doubt she'd be able to pass for anything other than some version of Sage herself. She's younger, yes- but otherwise looks identical to her.

I bet my father has billions hidden away. Even severing his corporate links, he can use those accounts to recover and build up resources for vengeance. He still knows a great many powerful people, both above and under-ground.

There's something else."

She paused for another moment.

"My father assuredly has command codes for any Sentinels made under his watch. If anyone knows them and could alter them, it's her."

"Younger, more well-preserved sister?" That phrase would go over like a bag of rocks.

Some days, it just took a simple comment to make Marcelo realize how big of a thing he was trying to do, topple Stephanie's father. 'Command codes for any Sentinels' was one such phrase in a world with X-Men.

Particularly a world where Marcelo was married to a known mutant. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms.

"So, would your father try to insert her as a mole? He has to know I'm behind a lot of what he's losing."

"That's not what my gut is telling me, but it's not impossible." Stephanie replied. "I'm inclined to think that she's telling the truth, though. Father might think to make a mole, but she's more than a little injured. I'm fairly sure she's got broken ribs from the way she's been standing and sitting.

My feeling is that he's become so desperate that he's not going to try for anything subtle. I think he's going to try coming for one or both of us, personally, very soon." She shivered a little bit. She couldn't lie to herself. The idea scared her a lot. Her father was a very powerful and dangerous man.

"I don't know if we can afford not to take assistance wherever we can get it."

Marcelo let out a long, slow breath. If Stephanie's father came for him, there wouldn't be much of Marcelo left. He had no illusions about that. He had been reminded fairly often that he was just human and fairly squishy just for being so. He would be nothing but a smear.

But it would be worth it to get Stephanie free of Shaw's influence. All of it. She deserved freedom like that.

He glanced down at the ring on his hand. He had at least made her very happy for awhile, but that didn't mean he was going to stop. Sebastian Shaw would fall, and Marcelo Alencar da Silva was going to be the fulcrum to make sure it happened.

Hopefully, he managed to live through this.

"Okay. He said calmly. "I'll call the doctor. See if I can get a house call or the closest private clinic they work at. We'll get her protection and she'll have an offer to work for one of our companies. Because Sentinels very bad."

Stephanie reached out for his hand.

"We're going to get through this. Alive. And free from his giant fucking shadow, at last." The thought was one that she could barely comprehend. Not having to constantly look over her shoulder. Not worrying constantly about Marcelo.

Being able to take what was hers and make something decent out of it.

She impulsively kissed him hard, until they were both a little breathless.

"Let's do this. Let's take the motherfucker down, hard."

He held onto Stephanie after the kiss ended. His hold was a little tighter than normal.

"You're such a poet when you're not speaking in Spanish," he teased lightly. He gave her one small squeeze and then gently let go.

"Let's go make the world a better place. Even just a little."

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Sometimes Unexpected News Isn't Bad News? (Marcelo)

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