"Ms. Potts," Alex said, offering a polite nod. "You can just call me Alex."
"Pepper, then," she replied with a practiced, warm smile. "I trust your journey was pleasant?"
"It was adequate," Alex said. His gaze flickered past Pepper to the silent redhead behind her. "And she is?"
"Oh, my apologies. This is Natalie Rushman, my new executive assistant," Pepper said. "Since Tony promoted me, I've needed someone sharp to keep things organized."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Alexander," Natasha said, her voice smooth and professional as she offered a hand.
Alex took it, his gaze momentarily locking with hers. He recognized the lethal stillness beneath the polish instantly. "Likewise, Ms. Rushman." He paused, a flicker of something dark and knowing in his eyes. He turned his head slightly to address Pepper, but his eyes remained fixed on Natasha. "You know, it's funny. I once met a lady who looked remarkably like you. Same fiery red hair, same... intensity."
Natasha's professional smile didn't waver, but her eyes tightened almost imperceptibly. "Oh? Is that so?"
Pepper looked between them, sensing the sudden, strange tension. "Really? A doppelgänger?"
"You could say that," Alex replied, a cold, almost cruel smirk playing on his lips as he finally released Natasha's hand. "Yeah, she was... quite hardworking, as I recall. But she had a rather nasty habit of trying to seduce kids."
Pepper's eyes went wide with shock. Natasha's hand, now free, clenched into a fist at her side for a fraction of a second, a reflexive spike of pure, murderous anger before her formidable control reasserted itself.
"Well," Alex said, turning his attention back to a speechless Pepper, his smirk fading into his usual mask of cool indifference. "I believe I see some of our European partners. I should take my leave. You ladies have a spectacular night." He gave a curt nod and walked away with Elara, leaving a stunned Pepper and a dangerously still Natasha in his wake.
Unknown LocationIn a grimy, dimly lit workshop cluttered with scavenged technology and the faint smell of bird droppings, Ivan Vanko watched a grainy feed from the Stark Expo on a bank of stolen monitors. His bird, a white cockatoo, sat perched on his shoulder, occasionally nibbling at his ear. Vanko wasn't there. He was safe, hidden away in a workshop provided by his benefactor, Justin Hammer.
"You dance for them, Stark," Vanko snarled at the pre-recorded image of Tony on the stage, his voice a thick, guttural Russian accent. "You dance like a puppet while the world forgets the crimes of your father."
He turned to another monitor, this one showing a complex software interface of his own design. Lines of code scrolled rapidly. With a few keystrokes, he initiated the final protocol. "Now," he whispered to his bird, "we give them a new show. A better show." He smiled, a broken, hateful expression. "Tonight, your legacy dies.
Tony Stark's Malibu Workshop"J.A.R.V.I.S., give me a full diagnostic on the Mark IV's flight stabilizers. I want to see if we can push the output by another twelve percent without risking structural integrity," Tony said, swiping through holographic schematics in his workshop. He felt good. Better than good. Healthy. The new element he'd synthesized from his father's hidden research hummed in his chest, a clean, powerful, non-toxic star that had given him back his future.
He was cut off as every screen in his workshop—from the massive holographic displays to the small diagnostic monitors—simultaneously flickered to life. A single, ominous symbol appeared: a stylized V with a lightning bolt through it.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., what is that? Firewall breach?"
"I'm afraid I am locked out, sir," the AI replied calmly, though a digital edge of alarm was detectable. "The intrusion is deep-level, bypassing all known protocols."
The screens changed again, now showing a grainy, dimly lit room. A man sat hunched over a workbench, surrounded by crude but powerful-looking technology. Ivan Vanko.
"You come from a family of thieves and butchers, Stark," Vanko snarled, his voice a thick, guttural Russian accent, distorted by the poor connection but burning with a hatred that spanned decades. "And like all thieves, you steal, you kill, and you call it progress. But your father's legacy is a lie. Your precious technology is built on the bones of my father, Anton Vanko."
The screen shifted one last time, showing a live, high-angle feed from inside the main pavilion of the Stark Expo. Justin Hammer was on stage, basking in the applause.
"Your girlfriend is there, yes? And all your adoring fans," Vanko chuckled, a horrible, grating sound. "Hammer gave me everything. His drones, his software… my software now. Tonight, your legacy dies."
Tony stood frozen, a cold dread seeping into his bones as he watched Hammer on the screen below begin to present the military drones. "Vanko..." Tony whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"J.A.R.V.I.S.! Get me the suit!" he yelled, already running, feeling the clean, powerful energy of the new element surging within him.
"The Mark V armor is not combat-ready, sir," the AI replied calmly. "The power-to-weight ratio is unstable."
"I don't care!" Tony shouted, sprinting towards the garage exit. "Happy! Get me the football! Now! We're going to a party!"
The race to the Expo, to his own legacy's potential ground zero, was on.
The Stark Expo, Main PavilionAlex and Elara had found a relatively quiet spot on a VIP balcony overlooking the main presentation stage. Below, the Expo was a dazzling spectacle of light and sound, a monument to Tony Stark's ego. The official opening ceremony had just concluded with the pre-recorded video message from Tony. Now, the stage belonged to his chief rival.
Justin Hammer, desperate to upstage Tony, was doing his best to emulate his style. He danced awkwardly to a blaring rock anthem, his movements stiff, his enthusiasm painfully forced.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" Hammer boomed, his voice echoing through the massive hall, a poor imitation of Tony's confident roar. "Tonight, Hammer Industries is proud to present… the future of American defense!"
From his vantage point, Alex watched the train wreck unfold. A small, genuine laugh escaped his lips. It was so transparently pathetic, so utterly devoid of the effortless, arrogant genius that defined Tony Stark. This was like watching a cover band butcher a classic rock song.
A quiet, silken voice came from just behind him. "I thought you never laughed. I was beginning to think your face was permanently fixed in 'brooding menace' mode."
Alex turned. It was Natasha, her earlier tension replaced by a cool, professional curiosity.
"Since getting out of that hellhole where they kept me," Alex said, his brief amusement fading as quickly as it had come, his expression reverting to its default state of watchful neutrality, "life hasn't exactly given me a lot of time to relax."
Natasha came to stand beside him at the railing, her gaze fixed on the stage below where Hammer was now presenting his army of clumsy, heavily-armed drones. "So, creating Aethelgard," she said, her voice a low murmur, not looking at him, "did that give you the relaxation you wanted? The peace?"
Alex's eyes narrowed slightly, a subtle shift that she would not have missed. "Alright, let's cut the crap. What nugget of information has Fury tasked you with extracting from me this time? Did he get bored of listening to my private phone calls, so he sent his top agent to try a more personal approach?"
Natasha turned to him, her expression surprisingly open, almost vulnerable, though Alex knew it was likely just another meticulously crafted mask. "He hasn't," she said simply. "After your… message… at Stark's place, he's classified you as 'do not provoke unless absolutely necessary.' This was… just me. My own curiosity."
"Why?" Alex asked, genuinely intrigued despite himself.
Natasha was silent for a moment, her gaze distant, as if looking at a past he couldn't see. "Believe it or not, Alex," she said, her voice low, almost confessional, a stark contrast to her usual professional tone, "I was also a captured bird. Snatched from my life, trained, brainwashed… turned into an assassin in a place they called the Red Room. They took everything from me. My childhood, my choices, my very sense of self." She looked at him then, and for the first time, he saw something in her eyes that wasn't a mask—something he recognized all too well from the faces of the children he had rescued. The haunted, weary look of a survivor.
"So, when I see what you've done…" she continued, her voice barely a whisper, "…I have to ask. Why did you build Aethelgard? Because from where I'm standing, running a nation, dealing with all this…" she gestured vaguely at the opulent chaos of the Expo, the corporate predators, the political maneuvering, "…it just looks like a different kind of stress. A bigger, more gilded cage."
Alex sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of his fifteen years and the centuries of trauma that felt packed within them. He leaned against the railing, his gaze sweeping over the crowd below, seeing them not as people, but as components in a global system.
"I didn't want to," he admitted, his voice quiet, honest. "I never wanted to be a leader, or a king, or whatever the hell they call me back home. After I got out of the lab, I knew the governments of the world weren't handling the 'mutant situation' well. They see us as a resource to be exploited or a threat to be eliminated. Nothing in between. They think we're a minority, easy to control, easy to disappear when we become inconvenient."
He turned to face her, his eyes intense, holding a cold, hard clarity that was unsettling in someone so young. "In any society, Natasha, when fear takes hold, the powerful always come for the powerless. And when the powerless get desperate, they turn to anyone who offers them strength, no matter how dangerous that person might be. They come looking for a savior, or a warlord. And I knew," he paused, the memory of the lab, the tank, the needles, flashing in his eyes, a phantom pain he would carry forever, "I knew, even if I ignored it, eventually people would come to me for protection. They would bring their hopes, their fears, their own twisted ideals. And I know what happens to the kids who are weak and captured and have no one to turn to. I lived it."
He looked towards the massive, glowing globe of the Unisphere outside, a symbol of human unity that felt like a bitter joke. "That's why I created Aethelgard. Not as a cage. As a statement. As a power. So the world wouldn't see a scattered, frightened minority they could exploit. So they wouldn't see individuals to be hunted down one by one."
Natasha, master of masks and deception, found her professional facade cracking under the weight of his raw, strategic truth. She finished his thought, her voice a soft whisper of dawning, horrified understanding. "So they would see a nation. A unified force that could wage a war… and win."
Alex's lips curved into a faint, grim, and utterly chilling smile. "Well," he said, turning his gaze back to the stage, where Justin Hammer's presentation was about to go spectacularly, violently wrong, "you're right about that."