tushanshu_logs | A Proper Family Reunion

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A Proper Family Reunion

Characters: Team Spicy Iron Dragon and their fourth wall guests
Date: April 15-30
Location: Keeliai, and House Spicy Iron Dragon
Situation: Dads. Dads everywhere. Also shitty stepdads. Gene losing his goddamned mind.
Warnings/Rating: "Father-in-law" tension, mentions of child abuse, very likely violence, complete and utter mental breakdowns, potential self-injurious behavior, gaslighting, and Actual Well-Adjusted Families. Gross.

The booms of the college's salt explosion echo through Keeliai, and with each boom more and more people appear.

The first is benevolent, and he's been here before.

The second is benevolent, and he has no clue where he is.

The third is malevolent...and he will take this city by storm, one way or another.

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The echo of the explosion jolts Howard Stark awake.

He's a little disoriented, and more so when he realizes he's sitting on the sidewalk. Hadn't he just been in the Hotel? This looked like the Sky Sector - where Tony's house would be. The one he'd share with Gene. (He'd been trying not to think about it, and had decided to sleep on it before getting more upset. He trusted his son; he didn't trust Gene.) And yet, here he is.

He stands up and shakes his head to clear it. This better not be some petty revenge from Gene for how poorly he'd taken the news. This isn't so bad; he recognizes the area. He isn't too far away from Tony's house.

Ten minutes later, he's walking by it on the way to the Hotel and is...a little baffled, because it looks more complete than it had a few days ago. And lived-in. So he knocks on the door.

----

Virgil Potts, on the other hand, is completely at a loss.

The rolling sound like thunder had awoken him, and after a groggy moment, he realizes he has no idea where he is. It looks almost like Manhattan, but the buildings are all wrong. Everything is different. The people are different. He's pretty sure he's dreaming.

----

Xin Zhang keeps to the alleys, in the darkness. It's sheer coincidence - or a cruel trick from the Dreaming - that he sees his stepson walk past, and follows him at a distance, blending into the crowds. The very strange crowds.

He must be dreaming; if the boy had made to dispose of him, why leave him the ring? Unless he was as big a fool as Zhang had always thought.

He loses Temujin in the crowd, but not before tracking him to the Sky Sector. He'll bide his time. He's good at that.

And he'll make the whelp pay.

Edited 2016-04-17 02:43 (UTC)

Tony has been upset for days about the salt. He's retreated to 'sulk' mode, which means he spends most of the day at the College doing repairs or engrossed in work, and then spends most of the night cooped up in his lab at home. He has not been good company, but at least he's been productive.

When he'd tried to scarf down something resembling a meal today in between projects, some of his coworkers had gently suggested that he take a real break and maybe go out to get some lunch - he'd taken that to mean that his bad mood was bringing everyone else down and they wanted him to go blow off some steam before trying to get any more work done. He can't say he blames them. So he trudges home, even though he doesn't really want to, and pulls some leftovers out of the fridge.

He's sullenly picking at the last of his food when he hears a knock on the door. Tony sighs.

"Yeah, what—" he begins, opening to door. And then he immediately forgets both his bad mood and the rest of his sentence.

"Dad!" His face splits into a giddy grin, and he flings his arms around his father. "You're back!"

Howard gives a start when Tony says he's back - that means he's been gone as he'd been starting to suspect - but he hugs his son back just as fiercely. Every time they get torn apart, they never know if they'll see each other again.

"How long have I been gone?" he asks, eschewing the obvious questions; those he can figure out on his own.

"You've - you've been gone a year. Right. It wouldn't have seemed like any time to you. But it's been a year. Almost exactly." Tony laughs. "I'm so glad you're back."

It sucks that he's been gone, but it's great to have him here again - even if it is, as Tony's starting to suspect, only temporary.

Howard looks startled. "A year? Tony..." He looks at his son apologetically. "I didn't mean to leave."

Being separated is hard for them. For a long time, they were all each other had.

"I'm glad to be back, too. Even though I didn't think I was gone."

Edited 2016-04-30 15:30 (UTC)

"I know. It's like I told you," Tony says ruefully. "That's just how this place works. So you don't remember going home at all - you just zapped out and zapped straight back in?"

Howard nods. "It was like I fell asleep and woke up again, outside of the Hotel. I was walking back when I saw the house, and it was completed."

"Huh." So Howard hasn't seen any of their future - he won't be able to tell Tony if the memory trick Gene tried worked. Tony can't help but be disappointed. But his dad doesn't need to know about that. Not yet, anyway.

"Yeah, we finished the house. And guess who else is living here." Tony grins again. Howard doesn't approve of Gene, but Tony's sure he'll approve of his other roommate.

The explosion has set everyone a little on edge, particularly with the strange echoes that keep happening. Although the continuing thunderous interludes didn't have an accompanying implosion like the one at the College, they're still keeping an eye out.

Which is why Pepper is up in the air, scanning for any problems, when she spots a familiar-looking hat. Normally, it wouldn't give her pause, but baseball caps aren't exactly common in Keeliai, so it's probably a Foreigner. The logo that Pepper sees when she gets closer makes her heart skip a beat - FBI. That walk, the way he's carrying himself, and the hat... she doesn't waste another second before she's hurtling towards the ground.

Hardly a second after she lands, Pepper vaults out of the armor and towards -

"Dad!"

And then she practically tackles him in a hug.

Virgil tenses when he sees the armor fly over in his peripheral vision - he's still not used to it - and he has very little time to react when it lands in front of him and his daughter bursts out, and even if he's worried as hell about her, honestly, it's just good to see a familiar face.

"Hey, kiddo," he says, giving her a hug once he's steadied himself on his feet. "You got any idea where we are? At least you have your armor with you."

This doesn't seem real, and Pepper hugs him more tightly just to make sure he won't disappear. She's missed him so much it hurts and all she can do is laugh, a mix of joy and relief.

"Keeliai. The city's called Keeliai," she tells him. "We're a really long way from home. What's the last thing you remember?"

If he recognizes the armor, he must have come from a similar time to her.

"Oof...Pepper...not so tight," he says, sounding a little strained.

"It's the day after the Makluan invasion. How did I get here?"

"Oh. Right. Sorry, I just really, really missed you," she replies, finally, and reluctantly, letting go of him. The day after the invasion - he's ahead of her then. "Um. Well, it's kind of crazy, but long story short there used to be an emperor here that recruited people from... all over the place to fight an evil being called Malicant. They're both dead now, but we keep showing up. The natives call us Foreigners."

Pepper isn't sure how to explain magic to him right now, but she'll have to eventually.

"Dad... I've been here for almost a year."

Virgil looks surprised, and a little concerned. "Almost a year? But I didn't notice you were gone. You aren't gone. How did this happen? How have you been here so long and I'm only here now?"

And then the rest catches up to him. "None of that makes sense."

"It's..." Beating around the bush is probably not going to help at all here. "It's magic, dad. It's a spell that brings us here - time kind of freezes back home for each of us, so we go back to the exact same time and place, and we don't remember being here at all."

She smiles nervously. Her dad is one of the most grounded people she knows, so magic and monsters doesn't exactly fit into his world view.

"I know it sounds totally impossible, like, mega super weird, but it's also totally true. I promise. I wouldn't make this up," Pepper assures him. She does sometimes wax fantastical but this was way beyond anything she'd have envisioned. "Why don't we go find somewhere to sit - there's a nice cafe around the corner, or we could go back to the house?"

As usual, the plan is to ply him with tea in the hopes of making this discussion easier, just as Gene and Tony had done with her.

Virgil shakes his head. "Magic...well, a few days ago I'd say you were crazy, but a few days ago I hadn't seen aliens, so I believe you. Even if it's hard to believe."

He blinks. "The house? You have a house?" Pepper's living on her own? The thought makes him shudder. It is a little terrifying. He wonders how many times she's blown up the place.

"You'll probably see magic soon enough." Seeing was really believing, right? "It's super cool, actually. And people have all different kinds of magic, too."

She stops herself before she starts to ramble; being here was overwhelming enough without throwing Skul, the Shadow Realm, artes, and elementals at him. Right now Pepper is just happy that he's here, and not much else matters.

"Not on my own, I live with Tony and Gene. They built it about a year ago. Well, Gene mostly built it," Pepper explains. "It's nice - they let me decorate a lot of it."

Dads! So many dads! Everyone is a big ol' happy family.

Except Gene.

Huh.

While Tony and Pepper are out patrolling the Sky Sector, one of them - or both of them - may see something unusual.

The Mandarin's armor, lurking in an alley - and when he realizes he's been made, he melts back into the shadows. But Gene was at home. Wasn't he?

Dare they follow?

Tony doesn't think Gene is exactly thrilled about Tony and Pepper's regular nighttime patrolling (if only because it means Tony's up and about when he should probably be in bed) but he tolerates it. Not to the point of offering to join them - though maybe that has more to do with his lingering discomfort with the Iron Man armor.

So Tony's surprised when he glances down into an alley and catches a glimpse of the Mandarin's familiar black and gold armor.

He pulls up short, flaring his boot jets, and lands. "Did you see that?" he asks Pepper. "I'm not going crazy, am I?"

He takes a step into the alley. "Gene? What's up? I thought you were at home." He had been, when Tony and Pepper had left. If he was coming out, why didn't he call? Or just teleport to them?

As much as Pepper wishes that Gene did more than just tolerate their patrols, she also enjoys some one-on-one time with Tony. It's part of a normal routine, and it means she gets to go flying a lot.

What is not routine is Gene appearing unannounced in the Mandarin armor.

"Pretty sure you're not going crazy."

She follows Tony to the ground, looking around a little warily. Something doesn't feel right, but that could just be the darkness in the alley or another echo of the Dreaming implosion. Right?

The Mandarin turns back when Iron Man speaks.

Interesting.

The whelp lives with Iron Man and there's another armored nuisance here.

"Obviously I'm not," Zhang says tersely through the armor's modulator, sounding exactly like Gene does. "Come here. I want to show you something."

"What's up with the cryptic routine?" Tony asks, amused. "You remember we have radios, right?"

But being unnecessarily mysterious isn't out of character for Gene (old habits die hard), so Tony's suspicions are not yet aroused. He follows the Mandarin deeper into the alley.

"Well, duh, you're not at home anymore." Tony's asked the pertinent questions: Why isn't Gene just spilling the reason for not being home in the first place?

It's annoying. Pepper likes surprises most of the time, but she's impatient about them too.

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A Proper Family Reunion

April 15 | a little early for father's day...

HOWARD

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Virgil-Dad!

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April 15-24 | family funtime togetherness

April 24, night | false Mandarin

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so sorry for the late :(