The Avengers Tower Guided Tour: Guaranteed to Excite!
"ID?"
The guard standing in front of Stark Tower--which doubled as the New Avengers Tower--stared down at Molly through black sunglasses. He looked like one of those Agents in the Matrix movies, only without the dumb earpiece. Well, there was an earpiece, but since the guard worked for Tony Stark, it was much more advanced; it was wireless, tiny, and nearly invisible in his ear. Across from him was another guard. They flanked the large sensorpad in front of the doorway. Inside, there were people already forming for the next tourgroup. Molly had gotten here just in time.
But Victor hadn't. This totally stunk. She and her friends had come to New York City on business, and she had begged and pleaded with them to allow her to go take a tour of the most awesomest super heroes' hideout ever. Gert had of course poo pooed the idea, citing a million reasons why any Avenger was lame. Molly agreed with her about Captain America, since he had put her up for foster in with the X-Men, but the rest were really freaking cool! What had saved her trip was that Victor was more enthusiastic about going than even she was, so the rest of the team had sent the two of them off on their own. Once again, she had to chaperone Victor since he was the baby, but he'd disappeared on her! And he was the one with the ID, cause she was too young!
"Um.." She scrambled in her pockets, searching for something, anything that would work. A McDonald's receipt, a bubblegum wrapper, and...a picture of her and her parents that she always carried around. Looking sheepish, she showed the gard that. "Will this work?"
The guard took the picture, stared at it, stared at her, stared back at the picture, and then sighed. "It'll have to. Kids get in free, so there's no charge. Please step on the scanner."
He handed the picture back to her and she stepped onto the scanner. A red swath of light went up and down her body first vertically, then horizontally. Her entire record...what there was of it...showed up on the computer. The guard scanned it briefly, and the his eyebrows shot up over the tops of the big sunglasses as he read the alert that popped up. "X Gene Detected: Class 4 Mutant. Affiliation: None" Of course, seeing that she was a foster of the X-Men (she'd never been removed from the system after she ran away), the guard figured that she couldn't be all bad. Still...a 12 year old girl...a Class 4 mutant?!? That was amazing. He put a flag on her in the system so that she'd be watched more carefully and waved her on. Fortunately, the sunglasses hid a now wary gaze; he had to wonder what she could do.
Knowing none of this, Molly went on inside. Victor was just going to miss out! The door whisked shut behind her and she joined the group, who was just starting to move. The guide noted her at the last second and marked her as present on the PDA type device she was carrying. They walked around to the side of the lobby, where costumes of each of the New Avengers were on display in glass cases.
***
About three stories up, Wolverine looked down at the group. He also had a PDA because he was left on babysitting duty while the other New Avengers were off taking down some poor bastard who had the balls to threaten the world on their watch. Not that Wolverine cared about being left behind; there were days when he just didn't want to be social or participate in the whole 'teamwork' thing. That was most days, actually, but some days, like today, he managed to actually get out of it. When Molly's name and status popped up on his screen, an eyebrow lifted. One of the Xavier dropouts. He sniffed the air and sure enough, he recognized her scent. She'd been his class all of once as an introductory 'here's where you might end up' thing. Obviously she was too young for combat. Still, he'd never know she was a Class 4. Pretty good for a little runt.
Suddenly, his PDA shut down. Tilting his head to the side, he beat on it a few times with his other hand. Nothing. He'd have to tell Stark that his stuff was crap; that brought a smirk to his face. The smirk didn't last long, though, because the lights then went down. At the exact same time, adamantium plate slammed down over every window and door, closing the building off. Wolverine looked around, sniffing the air again as he turned away from the railing and his claws began to extend with a slow 'sniiiikt'.
"What th'..."
Off to the side, his ears picked up the soft 'ding, ding, ding' coming from the elevator as it moved down the shaft towards his floor. With a soft growl, he moved towards the doors in a low crouch and sliced them open, kicking the metal sheets inwards. Stark could pay for it later. Sure enough, the car was coming down. He held his hand poised and ready and just as it was approaching his floor, he stabbed the controls. This brought the car to a sudden stop about halfway down the door, revealing several heavily armored legs and boots. It looked like a SWAT team. It smelled like...
"Weapon X" This came out in a gutteral growl; he'd never forget the smell of those lowlife shits.
With a loud roar, he swiped viciously at the leading pair of legs, cutting one guy off at the knees. The scream was satisfying to Logan's ears as the body fell. However, almost every other body in the car fell too, and Wolverine was peppered with a hail of gunfire. This caused him to stagger backwards from the force, waiting for his healing factor to kick in. Instead, he felt an agonizing burning lance through every part of his body where a bullet had entered. As he went to his knees from the pain, the squad ducked and rolled out of the elevator car and moved towards him, still firing. More of the worst burning he'd felt in a long time ripped through his body. He knew that feeling, though: acid. They were using bullets with hollow points filled with acid on him, something they knew he couldn't heal quickly. He swiped out at the goons that tried to surround him, but since he was in such pain his swipes were weak, off, and easily avoided. One brought out a big gun and fired once, twice, three times at his wrists and waist. They were adamantium horseshoe shaped things that imbedded into the floor and held him there.
"Bastards still want me? Haven't learned your lesson yet?" He snarled as he thrashed at his bonds.
By this point, the final man from the elevator had joined the group as one of them had gotten the car down to this level for him. He was a very overweight man, but he seemed to carry it well...almost like the Kingpin, but not quite. All of the squad were wearing masks, including him, but his left the mouth free so that a large cigar could stick out held between fat lips.
"You? No, we don't want you, Wolverine. You're old news." White teeth appeared as a sinister grin appeared around the cigar clenched between those teeth. "We're just going through you and Stark's little palace here because we can."
The Fat Man paused and appeared to listen to something. There must have been a receiver in his ear. "What?...Well of course they're hacking back, how long can you hold it?...13 minutes? More than enough time. Hold your position and we'll be out in 9 with her. Over and out."
"Th' runt..." Wolverine roared and struggled against his bonds with renewed ferocity. They were involving little kids now? That was just sick.
"Do forgive me, Wolverine. I'd love to continue this chat, catch up on old times since I never actually got to meet you. You're a legend back at base, you know. The greatest success and the worst failure... Ah well, duty calls. You must understand."
"You bastards...You take her and I'll personally--"
"Blah blah blah, yeah I know. Rip our spleens out, or whatever it is you do." The Fat Man walked to Wolverine and kneeled down, pressing the barrel of a gun to his eye. "Be a good animal and sleep now." He pulled the trigger and a tranquilizer dart went right through Wolverine's pupil. He immediately stopped struggling and went limp, the end of the dart sticking up out of his eye.
The Fat Man stood. "Go get her and bring her back. Remember, minimal damage."
As the squad moved out, he walked over to the man missing the bottoms of both of his legs. Obviously, he was going into shock from bloodloss. That was good; he wouldn't even notice the bullet that entered his brain as The Fat Man put him out of his misery. Now he was just a liability to the mission. Normally, they could experiment on him with the newest in bionic technology, but they didn't have the time to carry him out. The shot rang out and the end of his cigar burned bright in the dim lighting as he took a deep drag and puffed the smoke out around it.
***
Molly looked all around as the people screamed and ran in different directions all around her. What the heck was going on?? Was this a fire drill? Were they under attack? She didn't quite know which direction to go in; the doors behind her were blocked by an adamantium shield and she didn't know which direction the danger was going come from. She was ready for whatever, though. These people were sure lucky that they had a real live super hero with them since the Avengers were gone!
Then she heard the shouting and the shots from above. Upstairs! She ran for the elevator, but for some reason it wasn't working. Sooo..stairs! She ran for those. When she began to jump up them two at a time, she nearly ran into the group of heavily armed squad that ran down towards her. They looked as surprised as her, but then she heard one go 'That's her!' and all of the guns trained on her and began firing. Needles bent uselessly as they hit her invulnerable skin, the pink glow starting in her eyes.
"You guys totally picked the wrong day to take on the Avengers! They aren't even here! But I am, and I'm way freaking better so you're in even more trouble!"
She swung at the nearest goon and her fist connected with his armored chest. He let out a loud AAAAAAHHH! as he flew straight back up the stairs and hit the wall at the end where the stairs curved around to keep going up. Already she was lashing out at the next guy..and the next...and the next. Goons flew every which way as she went off Super Mutant Style on them. Their weird little darts were useless as they kept hitting her skin. Yeah, she was soooo better than the Avengers. They were lucky she was there to save the day!
"GAS!"
As this shout went out, one of them pulled out a different weapon and as she went to hit him. She got a faceful of green air that really stunk as her hit landed and the guy tumbled down the stairwell. As she turned to go after another, she was hit with a sudden woozy feeling. The world began to spin and the goons around her doubled and then tripled as her vision blurred. She kept trying to punch at them, but her swings became more and more drunken until she finally collapsed over onto the stairs.
"Get her. Let's go."
One of the men picked her up and slung her over his shoulder and they marched back up the stairs. One of them notified the Fat Man via the communicators in their ears and they quickly ran to another elevator labeled in the schematics of the building and rode it up to the waiting helicopter. Two minutes later, the computers came back online along with the lights and the adamantium shields raised. Weapon X, however, was long gone.
***
Iron Man stood in front of a bank of computers in his tower and looked at the center screen. On either side, different news stations were broadcasting the news of the successful raid on Stark Tower. One headline read: "Avengers Attacked! Innocent Girl Kidnapped" It had only taken him 84 minutes to disengage from the battle the Avengers were in and fly back when his suit had alerted him to the system failure in the Tower. He'd left the others to finish the battle. When he had arrived, Wolverine had been conscious but very, very angry. Iron Man had pulled the dart out of his eye, but had told him it would be a little bit before they could free him from the bonds. They were very good bonds, but Stark was all too happy to let Wolverine cool off for a while before he set him loose.
Not that he was a ray of sunshine at the moment. His inner sanctum had been invaded by Weapon X, of all people...an organization that was supposed to be defunct. At the thought, his armored fist slammed down on the table in front of him, leaving a dent. On the screen in front of him, Molly Hayes's record as it appeared for the scanner stared back at him. On a screen adjacent to it, a video of her entire visit and encounter played; they'd managed to hack his systems, his backup systems, and his backup backup systems...but he had a hidden camera feed not connected to any of those for just in case of something like this. He'd watched the loop of her visit and her fight 17 times now.
"Vanessa, scan for everything on Molly Hayes in all government records and media sources." Yeah, his computer was named after a woman (and it had a sexy voice).
"As you request, Tony."
Various screens began lighting up with information. Iron Man's eye sockets glowed as he stared forward intently. As soon as he knew where to start, he was going to free Wolverine and end this humiliation by finding her and saving her from Weapon X. An attack on the Avengers Tower could not be allowed to succeed or go unpunished.
The guard standing in front of Stark Tower--which doubled as the New Avengers Tower--stared down at Molly through black sunglasses. He looked like one of those Agents in the Matrix movies, only without the dumb earpiece. Well, there was an earpiece, but since the guard worked for Tony Stark, it was much more advanced; it was wireless, tiny, and nearly invisible in his ear. Across from him was another guard. They flanked the large sensorpad in front of the doorway. Inside, there were people already forming for the next tourgroup. Molly had gotten here just in time.
But Victor hadn't. This totally stunk. She and her friends had come to New York City on business, and she had begged and pleaded with them to allow her to go take a tour of the most awesomest super heroes' hideout ever. Gert had of course poo pooed the idea, citing a million reasons why any Avenger was lame. Molly agreed with her about Captain America, since he had put her up for foster in with the X-Men, but the rest were really freaking cool! What had saved her trip was that Victor was more enthusiastic about going than even she was, so the rest of the team had sent the two of them off on their own. Once again, she had to chaperone Victor since he was the baby, but he'd disappeared on her! And he was the one with the ID, cause she was too young!
"Um.." She scrambled in her pockets, searching for something, anything that would work. A McDonald's receipt, a bubblegum wrapper, and...a picture of her and her parents that she always carried around. Looking sheepish, she showed the gard that. "Will this work?"
The guard took the picture, stared at it, stared at her, stared back at the picture, and then sighed. "It'll have to. Kids get in free, so there's no charge. Please step on the scanner."
He handed the picture back to her and she stepped onto the scanner. A red swath of light went up and down her body first vertically, then horizontally. Her entire record...what there was of it...showed up on the computer. The guard scanned it briefly, and the his eyebrows shot up over the tops of the big sunglasses as he read the alert that popped up. "X Gene Detected: Class 4 Mutant. Affiliation: None" Of course, seeing that she was a foster of the X-Men (she'd never been removed from the system after she ran away), the guard figured that she couldn't be all bad. Still...a 12 year old girl...a Class 4 mutant?!? That was amazing. He put a flag on her in the system so that she'd be watched more carefully and waved her on. Fortunately, the sunglasses hid a now wary gaze; he had to wonder what she could do.
Knowing none of this, Molly went on inside. Victor was just going to miss out! The door whisked shut behind her and she joined the group, who was just starting to move. The guide noted her at the last second and marked her as present on the PDA type device she was carrying. They walked around to the side of the lobby, where costumes of each of the New Avengers were on display in glass cases.
***
About three stories up, Wolverine looked down at the group. He also had a PDA because he was left on babysitting duty while the other New Avengers were off taking down some poor bastard who had the balls to threaten the world on their watch. Not that Wolverine cared about being left behind; there were days when he just didn't want to be social or participate in the whole 'teamwork' thing. That was most days, actually, but some days, like today, he managed to actually get out of it. When Molly's name and status popped up on his screen, an eyebrow lifted. One of the Xavier dropouts. He sniffed the air and sure enough, he recognized her scent. She'd been his class all of once as an introductory 'here's where you might end up' thing. Obviously she was too young for combat. Still, he'd never know she was a Class 4. Pretty good for a little runt.
Suddenly, his PDA shut down. Tilting his head to the side, he beat on it a few times with his other hand. Nothing. He'd have to tell Stark that his stuff was crap; that brought a smirk to his face. The smirk didn't last long, though, because the lights then went down. At the exact same time, adamantium plate slammed down over every window and door, closing the building off. Wolverine looked around, sniffing the air again as he turned away from the railing and his claws began to extend with a slow 'sniiiikt'.
"What th'..."
Off to the side, his ears picked up the soft 'ding, ding, ding' coming from the elevator as it moved down the shaft towards his floor. With a soft growl, he moved towards the doors in a low crouch and sliced them open, kicking the metal sheets inwards. Stark could pay for it later. Sure enough, the car was coming down. He held his hand poised and ready and just as it was approaching his floor, he stabbed the controls. This brought the car to a sudden stop about halfway down the door, revealing several heavily armored legs and boots. It looked like a SWAT team. It smelled like...
"Weapon X" This came out in a gutteral growl; he'd never forget the smell of those lowlife shits.
With a loud roar, he swiped viciously at the leading pair of legs, cutting one guy off at the knees. The scream was satisfying to Logan's ears as the body fell. However, almost every other body in the car fell too, and Wolverine was peppered with a hail of gunfire. This caused him to stagger backwards from the force, waiting for his healing factor to kick in. Instead, he felt an agonizing burning lance through every part of his body where a bullet had entered. As he went to his knees from the pain, the squad ducked and rolled out of the elevator car and moved towards him, still firing. More of the worst burning he'd felt in a long time ripped through his body. He knew that feeling, though: acid. They were using bullets with hollow points filled with acid on him, something they knew he couldn't heal quickly. He swiped out at the goons that tried to surround him, but since he was in such pain his swipes were weak, off, and easily avoided. One brought out a big gun and fired once, twice, three times at his wrists and waist. They were adamantium horseshoe shaped things that imbedded into the floor and held him there.
"Bastards still want me? Haven't learned your lesson yet?" He snarled as he thrashed at his bonds.
By this point, the final man from the elevator had joined the group as one of them had gotten the car down to this level for him. He was a very overweight man, but he seemed to carry it well...almost like the Kingpin, but not quite. All of the squad were wearing masks, including him, but his left the mouth free so that a large cigar could stick out held between fat lips.
"You? No, we don't want you, Wolverine. You're old news." White teeth appeared as a sinister grin appeared around the cigar clenched between those teeth. "We're just going through you and Stark's little palace here because we can."
The Fat Man paused and appeared to listen to something. There must have been a receiver in his ear. "What?...Well of course they're hacking back, how long can you hold it?...13 minutes? More than enough time. Hold your position and we'll be out in 9 with her. Over and out."
"Th' runt..." Wolverine roared and struggled against his bonds with renewed ferocity. They were involving little kids now? That was just sick.
"Do forgive me, Wolverine. I'd love to continue this chat, catch up on old times since I never actually got to meet you. You're a legend back at base, you know. The greatest success and the worst failure... Ah well, duty calls. You must understand."
"You bastards...You take her and I'll personally--"
"Blah blah blah, yeah I know. Rip our spleens out, or whatever it is you do." The Fat Man walked to Wolverine and kneeled down, pressing the barrel of a gun to his eye. "Be a good animal and sleep now." He pulled the trigger and a tranquilizer dart went right through Wolverine's pupil. He immediately stopped struggling and went limp, the end of the dart sticking up out of his eye.
The Fat Man stood. "Go get her and bring her back. Remember, minimal damage."
As the squad moved out, he walked over to the man missing the bottoms of both of his legs. Obviously, he was going into shock from bloodloss. That was good; he wouldn't even notice the bullet that entered his brain as The Fat Man put him out of his misery. Now he was just a liability to the mission. Normally, they could experiment on him with the newest in bionic technology, but they didn't have the time to carry him out. The shot rang out and the end of his cigar burned bright in the dim lighting as he took a deep drag and puffed the smoke out around it.
***
Molly looked all around as the people screamed and ran in different directions all around her. What the heck was going on?? Was this a fire drill? Were they under attack? She didn't quite know which direction to go in; the doors behind her were blocked by an adamantium shield and she didn't know which direction the danger was going come from. She was ready for whatever, though. These people were sure lucky that they had a real live super hero with them since the Avengers were gone!
Then she heard the shouting and the shots from above. Upstairs! She ran for the elevator, but for some reason it wasn't working. Sooo..stairs! She ran for those. When she began to jump up them two at a time, she nearly ran into the group of heavily armed squad that ran down towards her. They looked as surprised as her, but then she heard one go 'That's her!' and all of the guns trained on her and began firing. Needles bent uselessly as they hit her invulnerable skin, the pink glow starting in her eyes.
"You guys totally picked the wrong day to take on the Avengers! They aren't even here! But I am, and I'm way freaking better so you're in even more trouble!"
She swung at the nearest goon and her fist connected with his armored chest. He let out a loud AAAAAAHHH! as he flew straight back up the stairs and hit the wall at the end where the stairs curved around to keep going up. Already she was lashing out at the next guy..and the next...and the next. Goons flew every which way as she went off Super Mutant Style on them. Their weird little darts were useless as they kept hitting her skin. Yeah, she was soooo better than the Avengers. They were lucky she was there to save the day!
"GAS!"
As this shout went out, one of them pulled out a different weapon and as she went to hit him. She got a faceful of green air that really stunk as her hit landed and the guy tumbled down the stairwell. As she turned to go after another, she was hit with a sudden woozy feeling. The world began to spin and the goons around her doubled and then tripled as her vision blurred. She kept trying to punch at them, but her swings became more and more drunken until she finally collapsed over onto the stairs.
"Get her. Let's go."
One of the men picked her up and slung her over his shoulder and they marched back up the stairs. One of them notified the Fat Man via the communicators in their ears and they quickly ran to another elevator labeled in the schematics of the building and rode it up to the waiting helicopter. Two minutes later, the computers came back online along with the lights and the adamantium shields raised. Weapon X, however, was long gone.
***
Iron Man stood in front of a bank of computers in his tower and looked at the center screen. On either side, different news stations were broadcasting the news of the successful raid on Stark Tower. One headline read: "Avengers Attacked! Innocent Girl Kidnapped" It had only taken him 84 minutes to disengage from the battle the Avengers were in and fly back when his suit had alerted him to the system failure in the Tower. He'd left the others to finish the battle. When he had arrived, Wolverine had been conscious but very, very angry. Iron Man had pulled the dart out of his eye, but had told him it would be a little bit before they could free him from the bonds. They were very good bonds, but Stark was all too happy to let Wolverine cool off for a while before he set him loose.
Not that he was a ray of sunshine at the moment. His inner sanctum had been invaded by Weapon X, of all people...an organization that was supposed to be defunct. At the thought, his armored fist slammed down on the table in front of him, leaving a dent. On the screen in front of him, Molly Hayes's record as it appeared for the scanner stared back at him. On a screen adjacent to it, a video of her entire visit and encounter played; they'd managed to hack his systems, his backup systems, and his backup backup systems...but he had a hidden camera feed not connected to any of those for just in case of something like this. He'd watched the loop of her visit and her fight 17 times now.
"Vanessa, scan for everything on Molly Hayes in all government records and media sources." Yeah, his computer was named after a woman (and it had a sexy voice).
"As you request, Tony."
Various screens began lighting up with information. Iron Man's eye sockets glowed as he stared forward intently. As soon as he knew where to start, he was going to free Wolverine and end this humiliation by finding her and saving her from Weapon X. An attack on the Avengers Tower could not be allowed to succeed or go unpunished.