Who: Dr. Doom, Pepper Pots and Iron Man/Tony Stark When: Thursday, May 23, 2013 Where: Doomstadt, Latveria What: They say whatever you can walk away from... Every now and then, someone doesn't. The monstrous occurs as Tony rushes in to save Pepper. Rating: Trigger warning: R for graphic violence.
Aside from her being locked in the luxurious suite with its renaissance decor, Pepper had so far been treated well. Doom seemed in absolutely no hurry to try and force the information out of her. Now, he knocked on the door, the heavy gauntlet resounding on the wood loudly.
His brow lifted a bit at her response, then he simply tapped in the electronic code and pushed the door open. “I require your presence sooner than I thought. Your... employer is en route.”
Then he swept from the room, fully expecting her to follow. He lead her down the castle’s stone halls with their hung tapestries, descending to new corridors of metal, part of the big sprawling lab that was Doom’s lair that the castle rested upon. The room he entered was huge, nearly four stories high with several corridors winding away from it. They were situated on a balcony at least two stories up with a sprawling computer system, holographic images showing Latveria’s borders, and a red dot blinking in the air. He gestured for her to have a seat while several screens flickered on.
There was a beeping sound. Doom motioned with his hand, and the central screen focused on the sky and zoomed in on a quickly growing speck.
The soft static sound started on the communicator in his suit. “Mr. Stark,” Doom greeted, folding his arms. “Just why and how do you plan to traverse my borders?” He pushed a button, so that Pepper could hear Tony’s response. He just wouldn’t be able to hear her.
~~~
Pepper admired the period decor. Given that she lived, more or less, in the sleek modernist home of a Futurist, she would have enjoyed exploring the room’s every detail were she not protesting her imprisonment by refusing to enjoy any aspect of it. “I told the concierge that turn-down service wouldn’t be required,” she called through the door at her ‘host’s’ knock, but that didn’t prevent his entering. The announcement that Tony was on his way changed her mood, however. Irritation replaced by satisfaction, she followed Doom where he led.
A real, honest-to-God castle. All in all, she thought she was handling the kidnapping thing rather well, but the castle made her feel like she was trapped in some bad remake of ‘Beauty and the Beast’, trailing along behind her captor but unable to keep from staring at her surroundings in curious wonder. But Renaissance gave way to Romantic, gave way once more to Gothic as they descended into Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory - at least, a very modern Dr. Frankenstein. Now this was something she could wrap her head around.
She studied the computers, the maps, the holographic displays, all with open interest, wanting to garner as much information from them as possible. “No, thank you,” she murmured in refusal as he bade her sit. Pepper didn’t want to be at any more of a disadvantage to Doom than she had to be, if she could help it. So far he’d behaved fairly civilly, but who knew when that worm would turn.
Honing in on the small blip that was apparently Tony drawing ever closer, she listened in, drawing her lower lip delicately between her teeth. It was her first show of nerves; Pepper had never once doubted Tony would come for her, nor did she doubt he would get the better of Doom and get her out of there. That didn’t seem to stop her from being any less worried for him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Doom had Pepper. For once, there was only one thought in Tony’s mind - oh, alright, there was a white noise of chatter about speed and velocity and the relative benefit of being a weapons developer, but that was practically JARVIS and not him at all. Doom took Pepper drowned out everything in icy fear. Doom slipped through his security net and took the one thing he could not live without or afford to lose.
He dealt with it the way he had before, when it had been him captured; he suited up and shot off across the world to get her back. Air space and speed limits, right along with the impracticality of flying halfway around the world in armor, were all subservient to the need to save her.
He was never letting her out of the apartment after this - she could manage everything by Blackberry, right? He was sure she’d understand, given the circumstances.
Tony was aware - JARVIS made sure he was informed of the increased heart rate and eye movement, at least, which was physical evidence for the conclusion - that he was jumping to extremes, his mind scattering through thoughts even as it revolved around the fact that Pepper had been put in danger because he was Iron Man. His problem: his to fix with his brand of justice through superior firepower.
He didn’t slow as the Latverian border blipped onto the HUD, as JARVIS recognized the incoming transmission and Doom’s voice growled into the suit. He always had a flip remark, never let the danger shake his heart or affect his aim: he couldn’t this time. Instead, he ignored Doom, targeted the border, and launched a shoulder-mounted missile.
~~~
“Ah... by brute force, I see.”
The border lit up with weaponry. The hovering, camouflaged drones came into sight, advancing and firing on the armored man. Victor watched and reminded himself that his opponent had seen his defenses before. Even had been in his castle before. He was swift, agile, and had a genius intellect when it came to a multi-dimensional environment. He’d find his way--right into his trap.
The tall dictator turned toward Pepper, his suit reading every minutiae of her temperature and heart rate. “And I wonder, how do you know she’s not in another castle?” Tony was on his way sooner than he had expected. Still, time was on his side, not theirs.
He turned the communicator off so Tony couldn’t hear him addressing Pepper, though everything Tony did was aloud through the computer com. “You have your choice, Miss Potts. You can give me the access codes to Stark Tower, or you can watch him die. Cooperate, and you two will leave unharmed.”
An explosion nearly blanked a screen completely white. He glanced at it. “Well, as unharmed as he manages.”
~~~
Tony’s silence told Pepper exactly how upset - how angry he was. People always underestimated his stillness, mistook it for a weakness, not comprehending the real danger that lurked like an iceberg beneath the glassy surface.
But Doom’s words shook her placidity, and Pepper turned to him in shock, unable to recover quickly enough to hide the kaleidoscope of emotions that churned through her. There was no way she could give him those access codes. It wasn’t just about the suits, or Tony’s work for S.I. - all of his private files were stored there; every single note he’d ever made, things no one should get their hands on but him.
And JARVIS. Beside the armor, arguably his greatest creation. And so few even knew how amazing an innovation the AI was. No one like Doom should have it, and she knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that Tony would die before letting him get his hands on any of it. But could she live with making that decision?
Looking out at Tony as he blasted his way closer, she felt pale. There was only one thing she could do - stall. Tony would get here in time. He always did. And then they really had some things to talk about.
Resolved, Pepper pulled herself together and turned to her host, telling herself this was no different than dealing with a particularly difficult business associate. “What makes you think someone as paranoid as Tony Stark would even tell me what you want to know?” she asked, far more casually that she had a right to. “You disappoint me, Mr. von Doom - I don’t like ultimatums; I’d have thought you’d be above these sorts of Snidely Whiplash theatrics.”
~~~~~~~
Brute force always worked. The border was still present when the smoke cleared from the explosion, and so were Doom’s personal copies of the Iron Man armor. Tony considered his options, and rerouted power to thrusters. JARVIS blared an alarm, marking the Doombots in red and incoming, fast, and Tony almost smiled, just a little.
There were features he’d added into the armor after he’d had it in an actual lab, and not just in his head and in a cave in Afghanistan. There were things he’d learned about flight after he’d revised the calculations as to just how much lift and thrust was actually required to achieve sustainable flight, and after he’d had a demonstration as to the disastrous side of pin-point, very touchy controls.
He flipped onto his back, suddenly reversing, and got a lock on the scrambling Doombots, and continued the roll, changing directions again. The Doombots were incredibly advanced pieces of technology. But they were only robots and AI, and Tony was the unchallenged king - Yes, seriously, so suck it, Doom - of the field. He wove among the bots, targeting and returning fire, absorbing what he couldn’t dodge or shoot out of the sky. He would deal with the pain and assorted injuries later, and repairing the armor would even be soothing.
Actually having things to destroy in interesting ways soothed him enough to retort, “Because it’s you.” The fact that Doom knew internet memes did not bear contemplation.
~~~~~~~
Doom studied Pepper’s determined face, and there was the slightest squinting of those scar-lined eyes. Not a glare. Underneath that grim, scowling mask, Victor was smiling. “You do not disappoint. Very well.” He took a heavy step forward, watching the monitors with folded hands, speaking to Tony once more.
“Your ‘assistant’,” The word was bit out carefully in his heavy European accent. “is a resilient woman, Mr. Stark. I have met few as ardent. However, she is still fragile, still unused to intense pain. Yet, she still refuses to give me your access codes, and while I take no pleasure in breaking her spirit down, it does not change what I need. Submit the access codes, and she returns to you. In one piece.”
He mentally turned the com off inside his mask, turning his gaze to Pepper once more while motioning to the chamber with his hands. Around the tunnel entrances, things were moving, rods with white-blue lights at their tips surfacing around the metal archways.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread...” He snapped his fingers with a metallic click to show her a demonstration of the webbing that appeared before the three main entrance ways. The energy crackled loudly, lightning flooding the archways briefly. Then the lances of energy disappeared, as quickly as they had manifest. “These are active now, Miss Potts, and are quite automatic. With his reckless speed, he will not be able to stop himself in time.”
He stepped behind her with methodical steps, even as they watched on the screen as Tony violently danced around the Doombots and they fell to pieces around him. His baritone was heard easily over Tony’s noise. “The energy will pierce through the toughest alloys. Even my armor is not impervious to such a strike. If he is insulated enough that his heart is not shredded instantly, the burns, both external and internal, and the damage to his brain, will be irreparable. He may die instantly... if he is fortunate. If not...” Doom leaned over her shoulder to point at two guns exiting their ports from the ceiling. “Those will be sure to decimate what is left.”
It was clear, then. He didn’t intend to get the information from Tony at all. He had only said such things to spurn him on. The metal-clad dictator straightened as they watched the fighting on screen. “But I can stop it instantly. If you choose. And it not, well... Perhaps when you realize there will be absolutely no one to rescue you from Doom, you will accept that Doom will have what he wants.”
~~~~~
“Hey!” Pepper spun violently to Doom, knowing what his words would do to spur Tony on. He made it sound like he was torturing her, and the anger that would arouse might consume Tony, and she needed him to be on his game. Might? When she was being held captive? What was it she so often told herself; told others; had told Phil often when they’d been dating? Tony did not share his ‘toys’. He would show no restraint.
Which is why she immediately understood the very real threat Tony was facing as Doom unveiled his security measures to her and outlined his plan. If he came barrelling in here, he would not slow down in time, and assuming Doom was telling the truth, he would more than likely die. Pepper had in her hands - or rather, her brain - the means to save his life, but it wasn’t so simple.
Doom shouldn’t have the codes. Tony wouldn’t want him to, and Pepper knew that. Yet if she didn’t give them to him, she was as good as signing Tony’s death warrant, even if he was prepared to die to protect his technology. But there was still a chance that Tony, as he had so many times before, would pull off a miracle. If she held out, maybe he would anticipate Doom’s trap or... something.
Then again, if she just gave Doom the codes, he would let them free, and they might still have a chance to stop him before he could use them. And Tony would be alive. In fact, this sounded like the better option, resulting in the greater likelihood of both their survival and freedom.
But - and she could feel her heart pounding, the air thinning as she struggled to continue breathing evenly - Pepper realized that even if she gave Doom what he wanted, no matter what he promised, she had no guarantee that he would let Tony live, or her, or let them go. And Pepper only knew a fraction of what that technology was capable of, and even that much was enough to convince her.
She was playing Russian Roulette with Tony’s life, but it was the only option. “As those move easiest who have learned to dance,” she quoted back to him from the same source. Tony would get to her - she had to believe that he would be alright because he was who he was, and he had never let her down. Her voice may have been hoarse, her legs shaky, but her gaze was strong.
“Mr. von Doom, I will make you a counter-offer,” she said coolly. “Let the both of us leave now, before things get worse - and I’ll ensure that Tony doesn’t repay you for this insult.”
~~~~~~~~~~
The part about Doom that Tony hated the most - besides the dictatorship, the armor-stealing tendencies, the third-person and ending sentences with prepositions - was that he mass produced his robotic copies. He destroyed three Doombots, and there were six more pinging up on his sensors.
Right now, fine by him. He had fear and frustration to express with more than words, and revenge to extract so long as he was here and Pepper was being held in a castle by someone he’d had pleasant words with not all that long ago, as well as plotting to make the world better. Trusting Doom had been a mistake, and he vowed he wouldn’t again. But for now, he was more than willing to strike hard, and fast, and maybe leave a few disabled as well as in pieces in his wake; he would deal with Doom after he got Pepper out of danger.
Then Doom dared speak about her spirit, dared be casual as he called her fragile, gave Tony’s mind a nudge down familiar paths and made him thinking what had been done to him, and applying what had been done to him to Pepper...
He’d thought there was nothing more he could feel, no fewer thoughts he could think. But he thought of Pepper not just captured, but bleeding, and his mind whited out. He cut through the Doombots with careless speed and savage brutality, as if Doom might have taken to the skies himself. The castle was before his eyes, and he was going to take it and drag Doom out from his laboratory and break him into several small pieces, and then take Pepper home.
He gave no thought to the number of Doombots that moved to intercept him; that was just Doom tightening his defenses, protecting his castle and therefore himself. He broke them, the same way he broke all others, and had just a moment where he blasted open the door of the castle, just in advance of his entrance, just a moment to wonder if he’d actually gone into the same door that he and Reed had last time they were here because it looked all different and was that him or did Doom know how to move around rooms of stone...
And then electricity arched, connected and passed through his armor, and everything went black. His only consolation was that when he dropped from the sky with a screech from JARVIS was that the weight of the armor and the momentum from his speed sent him through several priceless pieces of artwork.
And then the pain started.
~~~~~~~~~~
Doom watched Pepper’s every breath, the resolve work into her gaze. So fearless seeming, and yet... He looked to the screens recording Tony’s advance, the absolute, precise violence he enacted on the Doombots trying to apprehend him. They could hear the dull booms of explosions now, so distant seeming.
“Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence; and fills up all the mighty void of sense.” A camera was entirely decimated by flying shards of a Doombot, turning the view to black static. “The code, Miss Potts. I will not ask again.”
She would not yield, though. He knew by looking at her. “Then Doom will stand by his word.”
He looked back to the screens, his frame still and waiting. The views showed Tony’s wrecking into the castle, and the cameras switched to give the inside feeds. Then the red and gold suit burst into view, careening into the room.
The electricity fairly boomed, a blinding flash and trails of sparks and electrical arches lancing. Metal skid on stone, coming to a halt near the center of the floor below them. Doom stepped to the edge to look down.
There was movement. A squirm of seeming life in the burnt metal. Doom lift his hand, motioning for the guns.
The lasers caused the lights to dim, and they did not just cause a staccato of explosions, they severed the prone figure apart. It took little time for the smell of scorched wires, melted metal, and the sickening smell of blackened flesh to reach them. Smoke smothered the pieces, black and hissing as it rolled up. A final pop of sparks, and stillness settled on the floor.
Doom paced, looking below as he stalked along the rail, listening to the feedback in his suit. Only when a new beep sounded on the console did he look up and motion to the screen. A robotic voice sounded, Stark Tower in view.
“My liege, the data has been compromised.”
Doom’s shoulders stiffened. “What?” he demanded sharply.
The robotic voice continued. “We were able to gain access with the fall of the grid. All data has been deleted. The consoles within Stark Tower have self-destructed.”
Doom stood, silent for a long moment, and at last folded his hands behind his back.
“Leave,” he demanded coldly toward Pepper.
~~~~~~~
She could hear him - Tony was coming; and Pepper wasn’t anywhere near as confident that he was going to survive this encounter. Sick to her stomach, each distant explosion caused an echoing burst of adrenaline within her. Pepper didn’t know if he was referring to her or Tony, but it didn’t matter, her answer was the same. Staring at the screens, she said, “The winged courser, like a generous horse, shows most true mettle when you check his course.” But then she pinned Doom with her gaze and quoted again, “So by false learning is good sense defaced.”
He asked, but even as her fear grew, Pepper held on to her hope. The sour taste of nausea coated her tongue as she shook her head, unable to repeat again the words that might condemn Tony to death. Balling her hands into fists at her side, she watched as Tony blasted his way into the castle amid a rainbow of electric sparks. The cameras changed and an explosion of noise below announced his arrival; Pepper’s heart stuttered nearly to a stop and her blood froze the moment she saw the familiar red and gold carapace in the entrance.
“TONY, STOP!” she screamed, but it was too late; and as she watched, the current of white-blue energy sewed through him, sending him crashing to the floor.
Pepper couldn’t breath. She couldn’t move. But something was moving, and she had taken two steps toward the stairs leading down to the level where the seared armor lay when lasers rained down from the sky and destroyed what was left of Tony. If she hadn’t been holding onto the railing, she would have fallen.
It smelled like the luau at Tony’s 40th birthday party, and Pepper nearly gagged, then choked back a sob she refused to let Doom see. Carefully, she continued down the stairs so that she could see for herself that there was something, that there was a real body, that Tony-
The voices around her only barely registered as she reached the suit’s chest plate; the reactor was off, and she crouched to touch it. Inches from the metal, she pulled her hand away, feeling the heat. A piece of bone and flesh sat two feet away and she stared at it dispassionately, unable to process it.
”.... The consoles within Stark Tower have self-destructed.”
Pepper laughed. A soft, emotionless sound. That was a safety protocol, a fail-safe. In the event of Tony’s death.
Tony was dead.
Standing, she returned to Doom in time for her dismissal. If Pepper was surprised, it didn’t show. Nothing did. “I want his remains,” she said. “Every bit; and the armor, it belongs to me now.” She didn’t expect to get either, but she didn’t care; they were hers.
She could hear them coming, the cheap replicas of Tony’s armor he called Doombots, presumably to escort her out. With no intention of resisting, Pepper turned to go. Stopping only once, she turned her head to the side, speaking over her shoulder.
“Mr. von Doom - I owe you a debt.”
~~~~~~~~~
“You will count yourself fortunate that I have absolutely no use for you now, Miss Potts,” Doom said in a dangerous tone edged with the echo of his alloy mask. “And leave with that.”
The two doombots stepped heavily up to Pepper, taking up stances behind her, the heavy mechanical drones impassive and unyielding in their intentions of escorting her away from the smoldering remains.
Victor listened to the touch of her high heels on the metal floor, the note of her debt. The brooding, brown gaze animated fiercely at the challenge from her, fixing on her through the scowling mask. “You could never measure such a debt, Miss Potts.” The eyes glowed within the mask. “My patience has been tried enough today. You are allowed to leave among the living at this moment. Collect your debt another day-- if... you... can.”
The dictator turned sharply, cloak whipping behind him as he stalked down the hall, metal striking stone. The doombots crowded more insistently toward Pepper’s sides, one of them pointing down a hall silently for her to go.