by Stuart Moore
The lawyer stood over the broken desk, shaking a dark green fist. Jennifer Walters – She-Hulk – glared down at him, dark hair framing her furious emerald features. Her Cartier business suit wasn’t quite as expensive as his, but close.
“Are you even listening to me?” Jen asked.
“F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” he said. “Pause all feeds.”
“Pausing. Would you like–”
“Silent mode.”
Jen stepped over the desk and waved the list of grievances at him. “I said, are you listening?”
“I am. Now.”
She grimaced, reached out a hand, and helped him to his feet. With a mental command he dismissed the armor, not even watching as the iron glove on his hand dissolved back up into the air.
“Sorry about your desk,” she said.
“I probably had it coming.” He straightened, ran a hand through his hair, and forced a smile onto his face. “So what is all this? Who’s hired you again?”
“Read it for yourself.”
He took the paper, yanked his chair upright, and sat down. “‘Class action… non-native…’” He looked up. “This is the Kree? This is about that program?”
“Yes.”
“Carol – Captain Marvel – she set this up. She implored me to set this up. Their planet blew up, they had nowhere to go, so we invited them here. To Earth.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to exploit them.”
“I am not exploiting them!”
“They say differently.” Jen sat back down in her chair, crossing her long green legs and staring at him over the splintered remains of his desk. “And they’ve hired me to resolve the matter.”
“Hired you?”
“Well, it’s pro bono.” She leaned forward. “These are serious charges, Tony. Take a look at this employment contract.”
He accepted the new paper. “‘Mandatory terms of…’ This is ridiculous. This isn’t Stark boilerplate… I would never make people sign something like this.”
“Well, someone in your company did. I have scans of one hundred seventy-three fully executed contracts, all identical.”
“Jen.” He lowered the paper. “Should I have a lawyer here too?”
“The next meeting, you will.”
“‘Punishing work quotas,’” he read. “‘Threats of dismissal in the event they join labor unions. Inhuman working conditions.’ Well, some of them might be Inhumans–”
“That should read ‘inhumane’. I haven’t proofread this yet.” She snatched the papers back. “In fact, I’m committing a questionable act by bringing it to you on an informal basis, before I file it.”
“I appreciate that. I’m not too proud to play the Avengers card.” He looked up, serious now. “But I swear to you, Jen – this can’t be happening. I would never allow it.”
“I believe you.” Her green eyes bored into his. “So who did?”
“I… well… When Carol dumped this project in my lap… at a terrible time, by the way. She’s as bad as Thor – those big-picture cosmic types never worry about who’s going to have to work out the details. The legal hoops, the immigration and tax paperwork involved in employing nonterrestrials–”
“Tony!”
“Right, right, yeah. Well, I did what I always do when something new and impossibly complicated lands on my desk. I handed it to Pepper.”
“This doesn’t look like her signature,” Jen said, squinting at the contract. “Can we talk to her, figure out who she delegated it to?”
“Talk to Ms Potts,” Tony repeated. “Ah. That might be tricky.”
“Why? Oh, is she on the west coast?” Jen looked at her expensive watch and laughed. “Tony, I can wait till she gets up–”
“I don’t know where she is.”
He turned away and walked to the wall, pausing under a grim portrait of his father, munitions industrialist Howard Stark. He ran a hand across the expensive carved frame, the faded wood-grain paneling along the wall. Everything in this office dated back to his father’s time; he’d never replaced any of it.
“Pepper needed a break,” he said.
Jen cleared her throat. “From, uh–”
“From all of it.” He turned, grimacing. “She’s gone on an extended cruise, to get her head together. And I don’t… I can’t even spare the time to figure out where we stand, her and me, because with her gone my workload has quadrupled. My attention’s split in a million directions. In programming terms, it’s like having to do everything yourself – the conceptual work and the coding and the debugging, too – it’s too much. I can’t get my breath, Jen.”
He paused, eyes wide. Get a grip on yourself, he thought. You’re shaking.
Jen frowned at him for a moment. Then she nodded and gestured to his chair. He took a last look at his father’s visage, glaring down from the wall like some nineteenth-century railroad magnate. Then he crossed back to his shattered desk and sat down.
“Look,” she said, “I get the whole work/life dilemma. I spent so many years focusing on my career, I barely had a personal life at all.” She spread her green arms wide. “And then the whole gamma-ray business…”
“Yeah,” he replied. “A double life sure doesn’t make things easier.”
“I just kept climbing that corporate ladder,” she continued. “Then, one day I woke up to find myself in a high-paying job, with perks I never dreamed I’d have. And all it made me was…”
He looked down at the remains of the desk. “Angry?”
“Angry,” she agreed. “So I decided I had to identify the problem and deal with it. I realized I didn’t like myself much, not anymore. I didn’t like taking money from rich scum, being paid to protect them from people who couldn’t afford to fight back.”
“Um. Ouch.”
She gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”
He smiled back. “So you quit.”
“I quit. Hung out my shingle and started cultivating a different kind of client.” She leaned way forward, over the broken desk, looking into his eyes. “Which brings me here to you, on this fine Saturday morning.”
“Jen.” He edged his chair forward, meeting her above the wreckage. “I swear, I don’t know–”
“I know, I know. I guess I’m trying to say, I understand.” She let out a deep sigh. “It’s not easy. Any of it.”
He nodded.
“Let’s just identify the problem,” she said, standing up and moving to the window. “The Kree all work at this location. Is that correct?”
“As far as I know.” He frowned; suddenly she sounded like a lawyer again. “Most of them were hired to assemble aeronautics components and special-order equipment. In the factory complex, right next door.”
“Then it should be a simple matter to inspect that complex and evaluate the conditions. Right?”
He found himself hesitating. He’d known Jen Walters for years, fought alongside her against the Starbrand, the Masters of Evil, even the godlike Celestials. And he really did appreciate her bringing this problem directly to him. In doing so, she was straining her relationship with her clients, maybe even putting her license at risk.
But even so, a part of him bristled at her suggestion. Who was she to come into his place of business – the company his father had built – and make demands? To insist on an inspection of Stark Enterprises’ facilities?
Couldn’t she just trust him to sort it out?
“Tony?” Jen prompted.
“Mister Stark?”
“F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” he snapped, “I said silent–”
“Yes sir,” the voice in his ear said. “But I’ve detected two unidentified figures in the stairwell, approaching this level.”
“Tony,” Jen repeated, more firmly. “Is there a problem?”
“Maybe.” He turned to face the door. �
�Someone’s coming.”
Chapter 13
In an instant Jen was at his side, her fists clenched. “I take it you weren’t expecting visitors,” she said.
“If I was, they’d have clearance to take the elevator. Which they don’t.”
He felt strangely calm. Jen was clearly angry about the Kree problem, angry enough to smash office furniture. And yet, when faced with a possible threat, she hadn’t hesitated to join forces with him. That was good to know.
“Besides,” he added, “no one’s working here on Saturday.”
“Except the Kree,” Jen said.
“Can you let that go for one second?”
He reached out a hand. On a table across the room, a swarm of metal components rose into the air, forming the rough outline of an Iron Man costume. Not yet, he thought. Just keep it ready.
“Boss,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. said, “They’re here.”
The door clicked open. Jen stepped forward. Tony glanced back at the hovering costume and summoned a single glove, which wafted over to fasten itself silently on his outstretched hand.
A tall, muscular kid ran into the room. He had blue skin and wore a dirty beige jumpsuit. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen.
Tony lowered the gauntlet, frowning “Hey, buddy.” He held out his ungloved hand. “You’re, uh, Kree, right?”
The kid said nothing. Just stood in the doorway, studying the two Avengers with defiant but wary eyes. Tony had a sudden flash of memory: himself as an angry teenager, visiting this very office. The look in this kid’s eyes was familiar.
Jen turned to Tony, raising an eyebrow. “Should I add child labor to the charges?”
He sighed. “One second. Just one–”
“Halla-ar! Halla-ar, wait up!”
At the sound of the newcomer’s voice, Tony relaxed instantly. “It’s OK,” he said to Jen. “You can stand down.”
“Halla-ar!” A giant-sized leg appeared in the doorway, followed by the normal-sized body of Kamala Khan – no, Ms Marvel, to be precise. She stopped short, took in the sight of the kid standing quietly, then furrowed her brow, retracting her leg to its normal length. She turned to Tony with a sheepish smile. “Uh, hi, Mister Stark. Tony.”
“Ms Marvel,” he said. “How’s it going? And, more to the point: who’s your friend?”
The Kree kid crept up beside Ms Marvel, his every movement tense and wary. He touched her arm and pointed at the wreckage of Tony’s desk. She took it in, blinked, then turned to glare up at Jennifer Walters.
“Tony,” Ms Marvel said, “are you under attack?”
“What? No no no! Well, not physically.” He stepped forward, between Jen and Ms Marvel. “This is Jennifer Walters. She’s not a villain, she’s a lawyer.”
“Also a Hulk,” Jen growled.
“Easy, Jen. This is K… uh, this is our young Ms Marvel. She’s an Avenger too, a new recruit.”
He winced. He’d almost blurted out Kamala’s real name. Like Spider-Man, Ms Marvel kept her true identity a closely guarded secret. Tony could barely remember what that had been like, back in the day.
Ms Marvel frowned. “If you’re not under attack, what happened to your desk?”
“Oh, the, uh, desk?” Tony shook his head, embarrassed. “We had a killer end-of-week party in here yesterday. Clowns, balloon animals, the whole nine. Still cleaning up.”
“Can’t trust those clowns,” Jen added, deadpan.
Ms Marvel raised an eyebrow. “You know I’m not five, right?”
Tony paused, his eyes drawn to the Kree teenager – Halla-ar, Ms Marvel had called him. The kid hadn’t moved, but his eyes bored into Tony with an uncomfortable intensity.
“What are you two kids doing here?” Tony asked.
“I tried calling you,” Ms Marvel said. “A lot of times. But I couldn’t get through.”
Tony cocked his head. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”
“You put me in silent mode,” the AI said. It sounded a bit sulky.
“Sorry about that.” He grimaced at Ms Marvel. “I am totally overloaded here. What is it?”
“Well…” She hesitated. “I, uh… I needed to talk to you. About, um…”
“The exploitation of my people,” the Kree kid said.
“Right. Yes. That.” Tony shook his head, feeling overwhelmed. “I assure you, I take this problem seriously. Increasingly seriously. In fact, that’s why Ms Walters is here.”
Ms Marvel frowned at Tony. “You mean it’s true?”
“I don’t know!”
Jen was watching him carefully. Ms Marvel’s eyes were wide behind her mask. Halla-ar just turned away in disgust.
“Look,” Tony continued, “the first I heard of these accusations was literally forty minutes ago. Everything about them is totally, one hundred percent contrary to the ethos by which I run my business. If there is a problem, I promise you I will handle it.”
“Um, excuse me for saying this, Mister Stark.” Ms Marvel smiled nervously. “But you sound a little defensive.”
“What’s the matter, Tony?” Jen asked. “Little people ganging up on the poor misunderstood billionaire?”
“Have you seen this one in action?” Tony gestured at Ms Marvel. “Believe me, she’s no ‘little people’.”
“Enough!”
They all turned as Halla-ar reached up, grabbed hold of the frame holding Howard Stark’s portrait, and yanked it free of the wall. He lifted it into the air and hurled it straight at Tony, who leapt out of the way. The portrait crashed to the floor in an explosion of glass and splinters.
“Halla-ar!” Ms Marvel reached for him, growing as she moved. Her body expanded to twice its normal size.
“See what I mean?” Tony asked. “Not so little.”
Halla-ar backed up toward the door, dropping into a combat-ready crouch. “Coming here,” he growled, “was a mistake.”
A repulsor-ray charge glowed red on the palm of Tony’s glove. He glanced at Jen, who cleared her throat. “Kid,” she said, “I should probably mention–”
Halla-ar ignored her. “You brought me here,” he said, glaring at Ms Marvel. “To this exploiter, this rich man’s place of power. So you could grovel and apologize and play up to him for favors.”
“That’s not true,” Ms Marvel said.
“My people, my sister – they work themselves to death,” Halla-ar spat. “To support his lifestyle. While he rules over them like a feudal lord, with his money and his paintings and his fancy rich lawyer–”
“Uh, kid?” Jen interrupted. “Point of order. I’m your lawyer, not his.”
Halla-ar paused, blinking. “You are the woman my sister and the others hired?”
“Well, ‘hired’ usually implies money changing hands. But yeah.”
“Jennifer is also an Avenger,” Tony said. “She and I were discussing this problem when you two decided to break and enter the office of a man with nuclear-powered lasers in his gloves. In fact, we were just about to investigate the matter.”
Jen raised an eyebrow at him. “We?”
A flood of shame washed over him as he remembered his defensiveness earlier – the way he’d reacted to her suggestion that they inspect the factory together. That, he realized, was the way his father would have reacted. The arrogance of a cold, autocratic man, accustomed to unquestioned loyalty from everyone around him.
“Yeah,” he said, looking up sheepishly at Jen. “We.”
He crouched down and flipped over the painting, brushing splinters of wood off onto the floor. The canvas was torn in several places. A shard of glass jutted out of Howard Stark’s dark, glaring eye.
Love you, Dad, he thought. But I don’t want to be you.
“I apologize for the damage,” Halla-ar said. Ms Marvel shrank back to normal size, eyeing him carefully.
“Forget it, ki
d.” Tony lifted up the painting, gazed at the torn face of his father, and tossed it on top of the cracked desk. “This place is overdue an upgrade.”
An explosion rocked the building. Tony grabbed for a chair to brace himself.
Jen moved to assume a defensive position, back-to-back with him. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Something on the roof, from the sound of it.” Tony touched his earpiece. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”
Ms Marvel ran to the window and looked outside. “I can see energy flashing, down on the pier,” she said. “And people. Maybe three or four…”
“F.R.I.D.A.Y., talk to me.” Another explosion. “What are we facing? Galactus, the Wrecker? Black Order, maybe?”
“No, boss. I’m afraid it’s…”
A shadow fell over the building. Suddenly, Tony knew. His heart sank in his chest plate. No, he thought, anything but that. Don’t let it be them. Don’t let it be…
“…the Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Part Three
Till Proven Guilty
Chapter 14
“OK, it’s definitely the Guardians,” Tony said. “That’s their idiot-in-chief down there on the ground, Peter Porcupine or something. Looks like he’s picked a fight with some workers… yes, kid. You don’t have to raise your hand.”
“Sorry, just one question.” Kamala smiled, feeling a bit silly. “Who are the Guardians of the Galaxy?”
“Ah!” Tony turned away from the window. He wore his full uniform now, the gleaming red and gold armor of Iron Man, with his face exposed. “That’s a long story.”
“Are they villains? What do they want?”
“They’re not bad guys. They’re just mercenaries, and I don’t trust mercenaries. Also, they’re very stupid.”
Jennifer Walters leaned down to mock-whisper in Kamala’s ear. “He thinks everyone’s stupid.”
Kamala laughed a little too loud. As Iron Man, Tony Stark commanded the most advanced battlesuit on Earth. His repulsors could channel three thousand kilowatts of power, his uni-beam nearly three times that. His boot-jets were miracles of miniaturization, and his servo-joints were as nearly frictionless as twenty-first century technology allowed.
