commentary for the hell of it, part two
Also because it helps keep me writing something (I'm at a bit of a stuck point on my latest wacky crossover idea, so).
There's something soothing about doing laundry.
Penny thinks Wednesdays became her laundry day because she's usually the most stressed out after work, and the shelter's usually in good enough hands that they don't need her. Doing her laundry helps her unwind and keep her positive outlook; usually, by the time she's got a washer loaded, she's starting to relax, no matter what the day's thrown at her.
There's a lot in her one non-petition solo to imply that Penny doesn't have the easiest life (which was, to some extent, confirmed by the backstory comic). And even if her volunteer work helps her stay positive, she'd need some kind of moment to herself; her trips to the laundromat became that, over time.
Billy comes in about ten minutes after she gets there - not texting, this time. He glances her way and smiles, a little; from what little talking they did last week, she's got the feeling it took a lot for him to do that.
"Hi," she says. "How was your weekend?"
"Oh. Hi. It was... pretty good. What about you - you end up hunting wild signatures the whole time?"
Joss did the 'hunting wild signatures' bit first, but it's an awesome line, and I wanted to establish at least some sense of timeline in relation to canon (even though I threw it out the window in part one).
Penny nods. "Pretty much. Apparently, I missed Iron Man by about three blocks. Kind of a shame, that would've been one hell of an endorsement to get."
"Yeah, no kidding. You missed him?"
"So I heard. I think you still would've been in the area, actually. People said it was near where I bumped into you. Something about Iron Man punching out Captain Hammer, too."
Tony would have signed the petition. And then, after Pepper gave him a prod, probably donated a ton of money to the cause. But he was kinda busy at the time - just as well, since it saved Penny the trouble of being thrown in a garbage heap...
Billy looks toward the washers. "He more... sort of just hit him upside the head."
"You were still there? Wow. So what do you think about the hero debate?"
"What hero debate?"
"Well, you know." Penny shrugs. "The press calls both Captain Hammer and Iron Man heroes, but if they don't get along, does that mean we're wrong about someone? And if so, which one's not that heroic?"
"Iron Man's more of a hero," Billy says, almost immediately. "I mean... he at least makes sure the bystanders can get away unscathed, and mostly works in some pretty remote areas anyway. Captain Hammer's so busy making sure people know he's saving their asses that half the time, he puts them in even more danger."
"You're really opinionated on this, aren't you?"
Oh, Penny, you don't know the half of it. XD She's not one to hold Billy's thinking Captain Hammer Does It Wrong against him (now supported by the backstory comic), even though she doesn't think the League is a winning option.
"I've had a while to think about it." He shrugs. "It was interesting to watch, anyway."
"I bet. You do anything else interesting, besides witness a superhero scuffle?"
"Actually, I... got offered a new job. One of those things where I was in the right place at the right time, mostly, but... anything's better than tech support."
I love how he can tell the whole story without... telling the whole story. It's entirely true that he witnessed Iron Man and Captain Hammer's snarking match, and it's entirely true that he got offered a new job the same weekend. And yet, he manages to make the two incidents sound completely unrelated.
(Note to Billy: If you think the mad science will impress the girl, you should maybe tell her you're a mad scientist. Just a thought. XD)
Penny smiles. "Good for you. I've... heard pretty much nothing but horror stories, about tech support, so I can see the 'anything's better' argument. But I do hope you actually enjoy what you're moving to."
Billy grins; it's actually kind of charming, especially now that he's relaxed a little. "Oh, I think I will."
***
Billy has never seen two weeks pass so slowly as the time between putting in his notice at the tech support office and actually being free of the place. It's like the world knows he's leaving this sphere of work for good, if all goes well, and everyone conspired to empty the copier in record time and at least quadruple the number of stupid questions.
Originally, I thought the time would just seem to fly by. But then I thought about it, and when you're looking forward to the next thing a lot more than doing what you're doing now... it takes forever to get to the next thing.
It's enough to convince any sane person that the status definitely needs a little of its quo back. It doesn't help that there's only so much he can do on his side projects, since at this point, it's a little easier to wait for the official supply line to open up. That costs him a couple of solid opportunities to try to stick one to Captain Hammer, but maybe that's just as well; with work being so frustrating, he doesn't need getting his ass handed to him on top of that.
And there are a couple of bright spots. He keeps talking to Penny; they even go see a movie, the Saturday before he starts at Stark. (She calls it a celebration of his freedom from the daily grind of tech support. He's just glad it actually looks like he might have a chance.) He gets the Trans-Matter Ray up to a hundred percent, and starts working on a couple of other ideas, mostly so he's got something to build on when he starts rolling on the new job.
The movie was probably Penny's idea, and totally a 'friends' thing; she's not thinking that fast, at this point. Billy is likely trying to match her pace, so as not to ruin his chances - hence the 'take her someplace nice, why don't you?' pokes from Tony later in the story.
He also throws out a couple of blog posts, since the Dr. Horrible thing has always been good for stress relief. He's a little leery of disclosing all the details of what's going on, even though he knows the League is liable to catch on eventually; he'd rather make sure Tony knows that extra publicity is coming, to say nothing of Tony's personal assistant.
Billy hasn't formally met her yet, but he knows from the news that you keep Pepper Potts in the loop or face her wrath.
It's true. And, well, this was my first real chance to mention her in the story, so I figured I'd better take it.
In any case, he manages to make it through those two weeks without actually losing his mind, which he figures is a net plus. He figures if all he ends up doing his first day at Stark is filling out paperwork, it'll still be a good day - if nothing else, he's pretty sure he won't have to refill anyone's copier.
On Monday, he does end up filling out paperwork through to lunch. It's only a little tiresome, and after lunch, Tony makes a point of not letting him fill out any more.
I think one of Tony's unofficial rules is that no one spends all of their first day on the job filling out paperwork. You have to do at least some of what he hired you to do; otherwise, how can you know if you're really cut out for it?
"You can get whatever's left tomorrow," he says. "You've already done the part that puts you on the payroll, and I want to talk gadgets for a while."
"Oh. All... right. I don't think I'd protest even if you weren't in charge."
Tony grins. "Being in charge just means I'm allowed to pull you away from the paperwork. Come on, it's shop-talk time."
Tony's office isn't quite as overwhelming as his house was, but it's still pretty damn extravagant. Tony makes a beeline for the alcohol - some kind of scotch, Billy thinks - pours himself a glass, and offers Billy some.
"No thanks. Not my speed - and isn't it a little early for that anyway?"
Tony snorts. "It's never too early, if you know what you're doing. So, gadgets. What all have you done already?"
Oh, Tony. You and your alcohol. Not that I can blame him for needing a good drink after getting out of the Cave O' Terrorists, but there's enough in the film for it to look like he had a bit of a problem before that - not to mention the comic arc where he loses like everything because of the drinking. Not that he sees it as a problem, but he would in the right context (which Billy brings up a few parts down the road).
"...You would ask, the day I wasn't expecting this. I have a few schematics for things at home."
"So wing it. What'd you want the Wonderflonium for, at least?"
"Freeze ray. One that stops time, not like an ice beam." It occurred to Billy, when he got home from the aborted heist, that the load he'd been after would've bounced when the van stopped anyway; it's just as well he never got it home.
Whatever would happen with bounced Wonderflonium, I have a feeling it wouldn't be stopped time.
From there, he ends up explaining a few of his other projects. Tony likes the sound of the Trans-Matter Ray, and makes comments on a couple of the other ones as best as anyone can without the schematics in front of them, and finally stops Billy about five rays into the conversation.
"I'm picking up a theme here. Other than the ray guns. You're quite the pacifist, for an aspiring villain."
Billy shrugs. "There's nothing creative or elegant about killing people. And there's no point in putting people who aren't involved in the matter at risk."
I would call Billy at the beginning of canon Chaotic Neutral/Evil, to put it in D&D terms. Definitely not Lawful, if he's willing to steal stuff to reach his end goals, and not as fully-blown Chaotic Evil as he is by the end. In the case of this story, he ends up sticking to Chaotic Neutral.
"I like the way you think. I'm just wondering what the hell got you in Captain Hammer's bad graces in the first place."
"Aside from the fact that he doesn't like science-minded loners and probably would've beaten me to a pulp even if I'd tried calling myself some kind of hero? Before you started up, people who think like him were getting all the good press. If people actually realised self-delusion is his greatest superpower, they wouldn't want to follow his lead."
Captain Hammer is very good at thinking he's God's gift to the world. It just so happens that he's... kinda wrong.
"True." Tony considers this for a few moments, then adds, "So what the asshole needs is a little truth in advertising. There's gotta be a way to take him down a few pegs without actually killing him - because really, what fun would it be if he didn't learn anything from the experience?"
"We're talking about Captain Hammer. He may not learn anything from it anyway."
"Can't hurt to try, can it? At the very least, it might tarnish his reputation."
Billy smiles, a little. The gears in his head started turning somewhere around 'truth in advertising'; it'd be a tricky idea to pull off, and there's pretty much no margin for error, but that hasn't stopped him from trying things before. "I... think I might have something in mind."
As quinby has put it in past noodlings: It's about neutralising the persona of Captain Hammer, not killing him. Maybe if he's still alive, he might learn something from the experience - not that anyone involved is holding their breath, but. He might!
"Awesome. Keep me posted."
From there, they trail off into more mundane sorts of shop talk. But that's all right; it still makes for the best first day on the job he could hope for.
***
Tony likes the plan for knocking a little sense into Captain Hammer's head, and even offers to help test it out. Billy's a little skeptical about that, at first, but Tony does have a point; they're only going to get one good shot, whenever they get the chance to use the thing, so it's better that they know how it works beforehand.
And, well. Billy doesn't want to ask Pepper to suffer through it, Colonel Rhodes is an even more terrifying prospect, and... he can't ask Penny. Not without explaining at least a dozen other things. So that leaves himself and Tony, and if Tony's willing, Billy can totally live with that. He still waits until he's pretty sure it's near a hundred percent, though, just in case.
And now it occurs to me to wonder why he didn't think to ask Moist. ::facepalms:: He probably did, but decided against it for similar reasons to not asking Pepper. (Also, there's the whole... moisture thing. The less chance of it playing silly buggers with the machine's operation, the better.)
It's designed to last for about half an hour, but they have Jarvis route all calls to voicemail for the whole afternoon, in case it takes a while to wear off. Obviously, it won't matter if Captain Hammer goes around spouting the truth whether he wants to or not, but it'd be a little bad if Tony did that for more than the control audience - which consists of Billy, Jarvis, and Pepper.
It does for the first three minutes, anyway. When Tony starts talking about how many people he's slept with, Pepper decides she's heard more than enough, and heads upstairs to tend to the email backlog, or something. Billy doesn't blame her one bit, but he's got to see it through. It's the only way to make sure they've got an accurate idea of how the thing works.
And somewhere in there, probably not long after Pepper goes upstairs, Tony has a moment of 'I'm totally in love with Pepper, but she'd never put up with me.' Funny thing: I don't usually ship Tony/Pepper. This story... just seemed to call for it, though, in a way.
Forty minutes later, the effects start to wear off. Tony leans back in his chair and sighs. "Finally. That was annoying."
"Well, yes, but do you think it'll get the job done?"
"More than done, I'd say. You do good work."
From Tony, that's damn high praise.
Billy grins. "Thanks. Now all we need is somewhere we can spring it on him - preferably highly public."
"I think I know something that might work. I'll look into it tomorrow, and we can plan from there."
"Cool. Just let me-- oh shit, is that the time? I gotta - laundry, it's sort of a standing date thing."
Oh, Billy. XD
"Jesus, take the girl someplace nice," Tony calls, as Billy bolts up the stairs. And he's building up to that - with every passing week, he's getting a little more confident about the idea of asking her on a fully acknowledged date. He's pretty sure she won't laugh at the very idea, anyway.
He just hopes she doesn't ask why he's late getting to the laundromat.
***
Tony looks up the phone number that afternoon, while he's thinking about it, and asks Jarvis to remind him to make the call, if it gets to the next afternoon and it looks like he's forgetting. Nothing's likely to get done until Monday, but it can't hurt to leave a message, while he's still got the idea in his head.
This isn't the sort of call he wants to leave to Pepper, either.
Partly because Pepper, for whatever reason, doesn't think very highly of Christine. But Tony figures he owes her one, and kinda likes her moxie.
He remembers to make the call on his own, and gets it done before lunch. He's routed to voicemail, as expected, but that's all right.
"Hi, Christine, this is Tony Stark. Call me back tomorrow - I think I might be able to give you the scoop of your life. Call it a thank-you for those photos."
There's something soothing about doing laundry.
Penny thinks Wednesdays became her laundry day because she's usually the most stressed out after work, and the shelter's usually in good enough hands that they don't need her. Doing her laundry helps her unwind and keep her positive outlook; usually, by the time she's got a washer loaded, she's starting to relax, no matter what the day's thrown at her.
There's a lot in her one non-petition solo to imply that Penny doesn't have the easiest life (which was, to some extent, confirmed by the backstory comic). And even if her volunteer work helps her stay positive, she'd need some kind of moment to herself; her trips to the laundromat became that, over time.
Billy comes in about ten minutes after she gets there - not texting, this time. He glances her way and smiles, a little; from what little talking they did last week, she's got the feeling it took a lot for him to do that.
"Hi," she says. "How was your weekend?"
"Oh. Hi. It was... pretty good. What about you - you end up hunting wild signatures the whole time?"
Joss did the 'hunting wild signatures' bit first, but it's an awesome line, and I wanted to establish at least some sense of timeline in relation to canon (even though I threw it out the window in part one).
Penny nods. "Pretty much. Apparently, I missed Iron Man by about three blocks. Kind of a shame, that would've been one hell of an endorsement to get."
"Yeah, no kidding. You missed him?"
"So I heard. I think you still would've been in the area, actually. People said it was near where I bumped into you. Something about Iron Man punching out Captain Hammer, too."
Tony would have signed the petition. And then, after Pepper gave him a prod, probably donated a ton of money to the cause. But he was kinda busy at the time - just as well, since it saved Penny the trouble of being thrown in a garbage heap...
Billy looks toward the washers. "He more... sort of just hit him upside the head."
"You were still there? Wow. So what do you think about the hero debate?"
"What hero debate?"
"Well, you know." Penny shrugs. "The press calls both Captain Hammer and Iron Man heroes, but if they don't get along, does that mean we're wrong about someone? And if so, which one's not that heroic?"
"Iron Man's more of a hero," Billy says, almost immediately. "I mean... he at least makes sure the bystanders can get away unscathed, and mostly works in some pretty remote areas anyway. Captain Hammer's so busy making sure people know he's saving their asses that half the time, he puts them in even more danger."
"You're really opinionated on this, aren't you?"
Oh, Penny, you don't know the half of it. XD She's not one to hold Billy's thinking Captain Hammer Does It Wrong against him (now supported by the backstory comic), even though she doesn't think the League is a winning option.
"I've had a while to think about it." He shrugs. "It was interesting to watch, anyway."
"I bet. You do anything else interesting, besides witness a superhero scuffle?"
"Actually, I... got offered a new job. One of those things where I was in the right place at the right time, mostly, but... anything's better than tech support."
I love how he can tell the whole story without... telling the whole story. It's entirely true that he witnessed Iron Man and Captain Hammer's snarking match, and it's entirely true that he got offered a new job the same weekend. And yet, he manages to make the two incidents sound completely unrelated.
(Note to Billy: If you think the mad science will impress the girl, you should maybe tell her you're a mad scientist. Just a thought. XD)
Penny smiles. "Good for you. I've... heard pretty much nothing but horror stories, about tech support, so I can see the 'anything's better' argument. But I do hope you actually enjoy what you're moving to."
Billy grins; it's actually kind of charming, especially now that he's relaxed a little. "Oh, I think I will."
***
Billy has never seen two weeks pass so slowly as the time between putting in his notice at the tech support office and actually being free of the place. It's like the world knows he's leaving this sphere of work for good, if all goes well, and everyone conspired to empty the copier in record time and at least quadruple the number of stupid questions.
Originally, I thought the time would just seem to fly by. But then I thought about it, and when you're looking forward to the next thing a lot more than doing what you're doing now... it takes forever to get to the next thing.
It's enough to convince any sane person that the status definitely needs a little of its quo back. It doesn't help that there's only so much he can do on his side projects, since at this point, it's a little easier to wait for the official supply line to open up. That costs him a couple of solid opportunities to try to stick one to Captain Hammer, but maybe that's just as well; with work being so frustrating, he doesn't need getting his ass handed to him on top of that.
And there are a couple of bright spots. He keeps talking to Penny; they even go see a movie, the Saturday before he starts at Stark. (She calls it a celebration of his freedom from the daily grind of tech support. He's just glad it actually looks like he might have a chance.) He gets the Trans-Matter Ray up to a hundred percent, and starts working on a couple of other ideas, mostly so he's got something to build on when he starts rolling on the new job.
The movie was probably Penny's idea, and totally a 'friends' thing; she's not thinking that fast, at this point. Billy is likely trying to match her pace, so as not to ruin his chances - hence the 'take her someplace nice, why don't you?' pokes from Tony later in the story.
He also throws out a couple of blog posts, since the Dr. Horrible thing has always been good for stress relief. He's a little leery of disclosing all the details of what's going on, even though he knows the League is liable to catch on eventually; he'd rather make sure Tony knows that extra publicity is coming, to say nothing of Tony's personal assistant.
Billy hasn't formally met her yet, but he knows from the news that you keep Pepper Potts in the loop or face her wrath.
It's true. And, well, this was my first real chance to mention her in the story, so I figured I'd better take it.
In any case, he manages to make it through those two weeks without actually losing his mind, which he figures is a net plus. He figures if all he ends up doing his first day at Stark is filling out paperwork, it'll still be a good day - if nothing else, he's pretty sure he won't have to refill anyone's copier.
On Monday, he does end up filling out paperwork through to lunch. It's only a little tiresome, and after lunch, Tony makes a point of not letting him fill out any more.
I think one of Tony's unofficial rules is that no one spends all of their first day on the job filling out paperwork. You have to do at least some of what he hired you to do; otherwise, how can you know if you're really cut out for it?
"You can get whatever's left tomorrow," he says. "You've already done the part that puts you on the payroll, and I want to talk gadgets for a while."
"Oh. All... right. I don't think I'd protest even if you weren't in charge."
Tony grins. "Being in charge just means I'm allowed to pull you away from the paperwork. Come on, it's shop-talk time."
Tony's office isn't quite as overwhelming as his house was, but it's still pretty damn extravagant. Tony makes a beeline for the alcohol - some kind of scotch, Billy thinks - pours himself a glass, and offers Billy some.
"No thanks. Not my speed - and isn't it a little early for that anyway?"
Tony snorts. "It's never too early, if you know what you're doing. So, gadgets. What all have you done already?"
Oh, Tony. You and your alcohol. Not that I can blame him for needing a good drink after getting out of the Cave O' Terrorists, but there's enough in the film for it to look like he had a bit of a problem before that - not to mention the comic arc where he loses like everything because of the drinking. Not that he sees it as a problem, but he would in the right context (which Billy brings up a few parts down the road).
"...You would ask, the day I wasn't expecting this. I have a few schematics for things at home."
"So wing it. What'd you want the Wonderflonium for, at least?"
"Freeze ray. One that stops time, not like an ice beam." It occurred to Billy, when he got home from the aborted heist, that the load he'd been after would've bounced when the van stopped anyway; it's just as well he never got it home.
Whatever would happen with bounced Wonderflonium, I have a feeling it wouldn't be stopped time.
From there, he ends up explaining a few of his other projects. Tony likes the sound of the Trans-Matter Ray, and makes comments on a couple of the other ones as best as anyone can without the schematics in front of them, and finally stops Billy about five rays into the conversation.
"I'm picking up a theme here. Other than the ray guns. You're quite the pacifist, for an aspiring villain."
Billy shrugs. "There's nothing creative or elegant about killing people. And there's no point in putting people who aren't involved in the matter at risk."
I would call Billy at the beginning of canon Chaotic Neutral/Evil, to put it in D&D terms. Definitely not Lawful, if he's willing to steal stuff to reach his end goals, and not as fully-blown Chaotic Evil as he is by the end. In the case of this story, he ends up sticking to Chaotic Neutral.
"I like the way you think. I'm just wondering what the hell got you in Captain Hammer's bad graces in the first place."
"Aside from the fact that he doesn't like science-minded loners and probably would've beaten me to a pulp even if I'd tried calling myself some kind of hero? Before you started up, people who think like him were getting all the good press. If people actually realised self-delusion is his greatest superpower, they wouldn't want to follow his lead."
Captain Hammer is very good at thinking he's God's gift to the world. It just so happens that he's... kinda wrong.
"True." Tony considers this for a few moments, then adds, "So what the asshole needs is a little truth in advertising. There's gotta be a way to take him down a few pegs without actually killing him - because really, what fun would it be if he didn't learn anything from the experience?"
"We're talking about Captain Hammer. He may not learn anything from it anyway."
"Can't hurt to try, can it? At the very least, it might tarnish his reputation."
Billy smiles, a little. The gears in his head started turning somewhere around 'truth in advertising'; it'd be a tricky idea to pull off, and there's pretty much no margin for error, but that hasn't stopped him from trying things before. "I... think I might have something in mind."
As quinby has put it in past noodlings: It's about neutralising the persona of Captain Hammer, not killing him. Maybe if he's still alive, he might learn something from the experience - not that anyone involved is holding their breath, but. He might!
"Awesome. Keep me posted."
From there, they trail off into more mundane sorts of shop talk. But that's all right; it still makes for the best first day on the job he could hope for.
***
Tony likes the plan for knocking a little sense into Captain Hammer's head, and even offers to help test it out. Billy's a little skeptical about that, at first, but Tony does have a point; they're only going to get one good shot, whenever they get the chance to use the thing, so it's better that they know how it works beforehand.
And, well. Billy doesn't want to ask Pepper to suffer through it, Colonel Rhodes is an even more terrifying prospect, and... he can't ask Penny. Not without explaining at least a dozen other things. So that leaves himself and Tony, and if Tony's willing, Billy can totally live with that. He still waits until he's pretty sure it's near a hundred percent, though, just in case.
And now it occurs to me to wonder why he didn't think to ask Moist. ::facepalms:: He probably did, but decided against it for similar reasons to not asking Pepper. (Also, there's the whole... moisture thing. The less chance of it playing silly buggers with the machine's operation, the better.)
It's designed to last for about half an hour, but they have Jarvis route all calls to voicemail for the whole afternoon, in case it takes a while to wear off. Obviously, it won't matter if Captain Hammer goes around spouting the truth whether he wants to or not, but it'd be a little bad if Tony did that for more than the control audience - which consists of Billy, Jarvis, and Pepper.
It does for the first three minutes, anyway. When Tony starts talking about how many people he's slept with, Pepper decides she's heard more than enough, and heads upstairs to tend to the email backlog, or something. Billy doesn't blame her one bit, but he's got to see it through. It's the only way to make sure they've got an accurate idea of how the thing works.
And somewhere in there, probably not long after Pepper goes upstairs, Tony has a moment of 'I'm totally in love with Pepper, but she'd never put up with me.' Funny thing: I don't usually ship Tony/Pepper. This story... just seemed to call for it, though, in a way.
Forty minutes later, the effects start to wear off. Tony leans back in his chair and sighs. "Finally. That was annoying."
"Well, yes, but do you think it'll get the job done?"
"More than done, I'd say. You do good work."
From Tony, that's damn high praise.
Billy grins. "Thanks. Now all we need is somewhere we can spring it on him - preferably highly public."
"I think I know something that might work. I'll look into it tomorrow, and we can plan from there."
"Cool. Just let me-- oh shit, is that the time? I gotta - laundry, it's sort of a standing date thing."
Oh, Billy. XD
"Jesus, take the girl someplace nice," Tony calls, as Billy bolts up the stairs. And he's building up to that - with every passing week, he's getting a little more confident about the idea of asking her on a fully acknowledged date. He's pretty sure she won't laugh at the very idea, anyway.
He just hopes she doesn't ask why he's late getting to the laundromat.
***
Tony looks up the phone number that afternoon, while he's thinking about it, and asks Jarvis to remind him to make the call, if it gets to the next afternoon and it looks like he's forgetting. Nothing's likely to get done until Monday, but it can't hurt to leave a message, while he's still got the idea in his head.
This isn't the sort of call he wants to leave to Pepper, either.
Partly because Pepper, for whatever reason, doesn't think very highly of Christine. But Tony figures he owes her one, and kinda likes her moxie.
He remembers to make the call on his own, and gets it done before lunch. He's routed to voicemail, as expected, but that's all right.
"Hi, Christine, this is Tony Stark. Call me back tomorrow - I think I might be able to give you the scoop of your life. Call it a thank-you for those photos."