Tony Stark seemed about to say something, and I just crackled my finger and stopped him. “Don’t. I don’t need to know. I’m not your friend, Stark, I’m just a peer and a random associate with maybe a tiny smidge of intelligence who you know. Sure, maybe a disinterested third party is what you need, but you know what? I’m not your shrink, and if you want to plow your rut in the dirt on the way to the cesspool, more power to you.

“Howard Stark is helping lead the world to a better place, and he’s leagues ahead of you in actually getting stuff done. We don’t need you.”

I took a final drink of water as he sat there staring, trying to muster the will about being lectured to and just finding it hard, as all I’d had were questions and supporting notes. “You did good asking me to come here and preventing you from committing suicide by idiot genius. Is there anything else you wanted?” I inquired calmly, clearly ready to go.

He was waging an internal war, trying really hard not to come blistering back at me in a scathing storm of self-defense, insults, or rebuttals to my words. My complete calm all this time had left him completely tongue-tied, however.

He was being compared to his old man again, and he still didn’t measure up. I could see the sourness there, behind his eyes.

It was a good sixty seconds before he spoke again. “Do you have any idea what it’s like, being compared to him?” he asked sullenly.

“Him, Howard Stark specifically, or to an awesome, gifted, popular, beautiful, talented, and/or acclaimed forebear or sibling in general? Yes to the latter, no to the former. We have different areas of specialization, so I cannot recall being compared to Howard Stark.”

His mouth flapped that I’d answered him so precisely. “Well, aren’t you the lucky one.”

“No, but since you know nothing of my past and general circumstances, you’ll have to take that one on faith. I am crushingly familiar with the mindset. However, I have a modicum of common sense and realize it does me no good, so I tend to avoid and/or ignore it. Your possessing it does not surprise me, as it is quite common, but you’ll have to forgive me for not indulging in it with you. I tend to have more important things to do than wallow in self-pity.” Or, at least, I could whine, moan, and complain about things with one thoughtstream and the rest could get stuff done. I need alchemy to get drunk, so that was mostly out, regardless.

“So you just... dealt with it.” Almost a sneer, not quite.

“The ones I was being compared to were never the ones applying the pressure, so I ultimately realized it was just envy and they were irrelevant. Also, in the end, who was I going to be compared to? There was a very limited pool of people to pick from, after all.” I lifted an eyebrow. “Who else would you prefer to be compared to, Stark? Joe the Plumber? Liberace? John Wayne?” His Indian-hunting ‘Pioneer’ movies had made him famous in the States in this timeline, since classic ‘Westerns’ had never actually taken place here. Elsewhere, he was basically unknown. “Von Doom? Perhaps Paragon, or his father? I understand Clark the Fourth doesn’t really have much of a reputation...”

He was looking at me weirdly as he considered the question. Again, he was about to say something inane and cocky, and it kept dying on his tongue as I stared at him, waiting for the honest answer.

“I have a question!” Pepper butted in, making Tony jump, while I just looked over at her. “What would you do if you were Tony?”

“What would I do? Hmmph. I would get on the phone to my mother and my father and apologize very badly, loudly, and long, and then I would go see them. There is nothing more important, and nothing more necessary. If I don’t have the strength to do that, I don’t have the strength to do anything else, so it is meaningless, and I can go on being Iron Playboy.

“Once that happens, a bright future opens up. If it doesn’t, he can stay in his little rut where he’s a shining jewel waiting to get dumped in a cesspool.”

“But you said he should go to Xandar,” Pepper continued hurriedly.

“He can’t possibly do that without the permission of The Bear or the Hag, neither of which are going to give him the time of day after the way he treated his father. They’ve known Stark since he was in diapers, and they have no time for spoiled brats. Seriously, I’m surprised his Uncle Steve has been able to put up with him. He and Howard Stark are like best friends. I’m sure half the reason he’s on the Avengers is just to look after Stark for his dad.”

Tony blushed fiercely at the family connections being mentioned.

“You know the Hag and the Bear personally?” Pepper gaped at Tony.

“They used to come to Dad’s Christmas party,” he admitted sullenly. “Always brought these great wind-up clockwork toys, the articulation was...” he waved his hand and looked away. “I don’t think I learned how to put any of them back together until I was ten or something. You had to be SO precise, the tolerances were...” he just sighed again.

I glanced at Pepper, whose face was all astonishment. “They STILL go to Howard Stark’s Christmas Party. And yes, Stark walked away from the highest tech curve on Terra and leading our people into space, all so he could peddle low-tech stuff and fly around in something reminiscent of his dad’s old armor designs. I don’t understand it, but Stark’s a special butterfly.”

“If they are so great, why aren’t you working for them?” Stark percolated, finally getting angry with me. “You’re just... assisting Reed with whatever his latest project is?”

I just lifted an eyebrow at him. “Whatever makes you think I’m not doing work for them, Stark?” His mouth flapped a moment blankly. “You want Profound Math, hypergeometry, or dimensional calculus on Terra, you come to me. I’m the best analyst for Isotopic interactions of Energized Materials around, and the troubleshooter for production processes thereof. I’m the single best person around for doing analysis of Psicraft, Science, Weird Science, and Magical combined interactions, and I can even work in Chi if I have to.

“I have 468 registered personal patents in the United States. I have over four THOUSAND in Russia and the Tribal Alliance, on everything from advanced profound energies to how to make an idealized drinking glass for Corvinisky Energized Bourbon, and that isn’t even going in to the white papers I’ve put out, which are about eighty-four, with commentary on literally thousands of papers submitted by others.”

I flicked a finger, and a Holo popped up in front of us. He looked at it, and blinked, especially as other schematics popped in around it, covering up the original image of his current suit of armor. Some of the plans were in excruciatingly clear detail.

“Did you hack my systems?” he asked, staring at the complete plans for his own suit of armor, rather aghast.

“No. You stood within five feet of me. Just like I can read ALIEN technology by passing by it, I can read YOURS. I know exactly how advanced your tech is, what Isotopes you use, the one hundred and forty-three of my patents you are employing in your armor, and the corrected formulae I edited for you you’ve been employing. Since the tech trees you are building have already been completed in Russia, I know where you’re going with each iteration, and make sure to have the Energized materials on hand at Grimm Materials for you when you come calling for them.”

That look he was giving me, just maybe touching the edge of... “What do you do, take credit for everything come out of the Baxter Building?” he asked in disbelief.

Ah, nope. He just couldn’t get past his own ego. “No, but I file most of their patents now, and review which ones are open source and which ones are to be leased. They aren’t too familiar with the RTS patent guidelines, so I submit those on their behalf, too. Peter Parker’s polymer stuff is first rate, and his application and production tech is pretty good, too. They are a bit ditzy over there, and would totally forget to file the patent upgrades and stuff without me.”

A bit ditzy. The Baxter Foundation. Some of the brightest young scientific minds in the world. There were dozens of labs and universities in the States and Canada vying to just ride our coattails, and smart kids who wanted to work for us for one reason or another. The place Tony Stark turned to when he wanted new ideas, and which supplied him the models and designs for the really outrageous stuff he couldn’t think up on his own.

I was sure he could put the pieces together, equally certain his ego was going to get very much in the way of doing that. He just didn’t want to admit that maybe I was smarter than him, as opposed to just better at math.

“And you just... memorized my whole suit.”

I just looked at him. “I can memorize Xandaran technology. What is your suit in comparison?”

His mouth opened and closed again. I had a point, right? “So... you could make a Nova uniform?” he asked leadingly.

“No, I don’t have the tools.” Without cheating and using magic directly, that is. Nova Force attunement and the Mentor programming were also beyond us, as the one required the Force’s approval and the other required sub-akashic programming, which we couldn’t do yet... and certainly not into the Xandaran Akasha.

I could tell he wanted to beg me for the schematics, but didn’t dare to.

He finally sighed and put his hands up to his face. “You are still SO annoying, Lightning Legs.” I remained completely unmoved, but Pepper winced for me again. “Is Reed working on any of their technology at all?” he pressed, before I could get up.

I looked at him for a moment, judging how much I should reveal, and shrugged. “Reed was not on Xandar and has not had much exposure to their technology, aside from examining some of the tech of Richard Ryder’s suit and helm. There’s enough foundational and production tech of various sources and origins for him to design and work on to occupy himself for the next couple of years, at least.

“However, I advised that he use the fact that Xandarans are beginning to upgrade LaGrange to work with them as a technical advisor and increase his exposure. As I understand it, we stumbled onto the fact that the Xandarans have no exposure to Sha Particles,” called Pym Particles here in the States after Hank Pym figured out how to isolate them, forty years after Svartazk did, “nor unstable molecules. The Bear figures that if we can get either to integrate with Xandaran tech, it’ll be the first big breakthrough in technology they’ve had in millennia, and give us an open door to their technology.

“Reed is naturally the expert on unstable molecules, so he’s been leading some of the research in that area. He’s a bit behind in some of the Weird Science behind it all, but you know him, he catches up quick.”

And Tony Stark was out of the loop, and hadn’t known any of this. The cloud hanging over him was only getting darker.

Because he was getting left behind, and nobody was missing him...

---------

Author’s Note: RTS = Russo-Tribal Standard. Sort of like ISO 9000.

================

The Present...

“Yeah, I went to see him on a semi-related manner. He was attempting to duplicate baseline Xandaran production-tech, starting with the molmechs. I told him to burn it all Right Now, and he did, then things sort of wandered,” I replied to Sama.

“Well, he actually went home and apologized to his mother and father. Surprised the Hell out of everyone. What did you say to him?”

“Oh, nothing much. He’s out of the loop, working on inferior tech, nobody cares that he’s not contributing except the family he’s estranged from, if he tries to work on tech from our only space allies without permission he’s probably going to end up dead. You know, the usual stuff.”

“I see. He’s finally seeing the consequences for his actions. Mmm. Well, giving the kid a kick in the arse wasn’t a bad thing. I explicitly forbade his family from going to him, by the way. The petulant little sulker hasn’t heard from them in years.”

“Sounds like Stark,” I replied, not really concerned. “What did he do, petition to go to Xandar?”

“Yes, actually. He wants to help organize the weapons arrays and defenses for the Nebula invasion. He figures some good old human aggressiveness would be good for them.”

“He said that to YOU?” I was incredulous. To Sama, of all people?

She did that low, wicked laugh she did so well. “I said it was fine if he took Pepper along, sure, and he better come back with a grandchild or two for Howard in tow.”

“You can be SO old-fashioned,” I half-laughed back to her.

“He’ll start actually understanding his father once he’s a dad,” she sniffed. “Also, I do have a minor problem for you. You’re descending on Brazil?”

I sighed to myself. It was starting. “Yes.”

“There’s a quick problem to take care of in Goinania. Just grab it on the way to Brasilia, will you?”

“Sure.”

That was why I didn’t like being Sama’s subordinate. Instead of having some local Brazilian take care of it, she just dumped it on me.

I sighed, matched up the location of the regional metropolis in my head and what was going on rose up in my Cosmic Awareness, even pulling in breaking internet news.

Oh, some super-powered idiots with limited life expectancies and horns on their heads were making their way through the sprawling shantytown at the edge of the city, killing everything and everyone and setting it all aflame with the beams they shot out of the horns.

Gods and Totems...