Alice, it's the MCU!

Alice made it back to the restaurant just as Tony showed up on the race broadcast. “Alice, Alice!” Pepper called to her from the table.

“Yes, Miss Potts?” Alice asked, trying to look innocent.

“Did you know about this?” Pepper asked, regarding Tony.

“…Kinda?” Alice shrugged. “I mean, he already flies around at breakneck speeds, so I figured letting him race his own car —”

“I don’t want to hear the word ‘breakneck’ right now!” Pepper snapped. “And he’s usually the only one up there in the skies! There are something like two dozen other cars on that track!”

Alice inhaled sharply through clenched jaw, air hissing through her teeth. “Oh yeah, didn’t think about that part.”

“Are you… are you his long lost daughter or something?” Pepper asked. “Because that is, word for word, something I’ve heard come out of his mouth over and over —”

“No!” Alice said. “Mr. Stark is… uh… definitely not my father.”

Pepper’s eyes narrowed slightly, before turning back to the TV where Tony’s name was now listed on the official race scorecard thingy. “This… this cannot happen.”

“Should I go beat him up?” Alice suggested.

Pepper snorted. “Tempting… maybe another time. Where’s Happy?”

“He’s waiting outside, I guess in case Tony commits an international incident and we need to make a quick getaway to the airport,” Alice said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Pepper muttered darkly to herself. “Okay, get him,” she instructed Alice. “I need Happy.”

Alice went out to grab him. “What, we’ve got to race to the airport again?” Happy asked warily.

“No, Mr. Stark went and drove his own car in the race and I think Pepper wants us to drive to the next, uh, checkpoint?” Alice realized she wasn’t sure if the F1 was one of those circular track dealies or a longer course that didn’t involve looping. “…Anyway, she probably just wants to yell at Mr. Stark sooner rather than later,” she concluded.

“She always does,” Happy said, following Alice into the restaurant.

They re-entered the restaurant just in time to catch the crewman walk out onto the racetrack. “Hey, that guy’s gonna get wasted if he doesn’t watch out!” Alice said aloud. And then he took off his helmet and the camera zoomed in on him. “…That’s Mickey Rourke,” she uttered.

Okay, Alice, is it really merely a big fucking coincidence that everyone looks like a movie star? she asked herself. Think about it like this: Mickey Rourke is not generally known for playing characters of a kind and sensitive nature. If this were a movie, this is the part where he pulls out a bazooka or something and starts blowing away racecars.

And then Mickey Rourke ripped open his shirt, revealing an arc reactor. Whips appeared in his hands, almost like magic. And then electricity began crackling all up and down the whole shebang, burning his shirt off entirely. A distant part of Alice hoped that he’d thought to ground himself or he’d just end up zapping himself. Another distant part of Alice chided her for hoping the bad guy didn’t just kill himself, because this was obviously the goddamn bad guy.

She was already at Pepper’s table and forcefully dragging her along to Happy when the first whipstrike cleaved a racecar damn near in half, sending its wreckage flipping a few hundred yards further down the track.

***

Happy slammed through the barricade blocking regular traffic from the race’s route. Pepper threw up her arms in fright, but Alice just watched from the passenger seat with steely resolve. Being Tony’s assistant was an odd change of pace for her, and part of her liked the challenge of intricately dealing with people in non-violent ways.

But a much more primal part of her lived for handing out ass-beatings to those who’d earned them.

Happy narrowly avoided colliding with oncoming racecars as the limo barreled down the track, fully in his own element. A small part of him was even glad; ever since Tony had become Iron Man, chances to actually fulfill his role as bodyguard had been few and far between; rushing to Tony’s aid now again was him fully at his peak.

The radio, its French announcer giving a panicked play-by-play of the ongoing attack, announced that Tony’s car had been bisected, and the assailant was now approaching the wreckage.

“Give me the case!” Pepper demanded of Happy.

“Here, take it!” Happy said, passing it partway back to her — stopped by the chain.

“Where’s the key?!” Pepper shouted.

Alice absently grabbed the chain with both hands and pulled, breaking it neatly. “There you go, Miss Potts.”

Pepper stared at Alice. “How did you do that?”

“Just a crappy chain, I guess,” Alice bluffed.

“Crappy, hell, that was the same kind the military uses for the guy who carries the Football!” Happy protested, not having the luxury of staring Alice down.

“They should probably get better chains, then,” Alice dismissed, ignoring the icy spike of dread that shot through her at the mention of the Football.

Happy finally drove into sight of Tony and Not Mickey Rourke… not to mention all the flaming wreckage from something like half a dozen cars. “Oh my God,” Pepper moaned. Happy only slowed down a little to give Tony time to leap out of the way as he plowed the car directly into the guy.

“GTA, MOTHERFUCKER!” Alice whooped with joy. She saw Tony approach Happy’s side of the car and opened her own door — again forgetting her strength, the door simply snapped off its hinges. As Happy, Pepper, and Tony had a fun little screaming match, Alice jumped out of the car and reached over the hood, intending to rip the arc reactor from its mounted spot and crush it for good.

The Mickey Rourke lookalike backhanded her, which only knocked her over because she’d assumed the impact had knocked him out or worse and was thus caught off guard. He raised his whip to strike — and Alice realized he was about to hit Tony, who’d jogged around to her side of the car to slip into the backseat — and thrust herself up, intercepting the whip before it had a chance to kill Tony.

It was a shame Alice’s life had to end this way, this quickly, but it was a choice she would have made without hesitation a million times in a row. Her last thought was, Now I’ll know what it felt like for __________ to be sliced into pieces, followed by frustration at the gaps in her memories. Ah well, hopefully they’d be fixed up in the afterlife.

The whip coiled over her shoulder and around her torso, setting her dress aflame and eliciting a grunt of pain. But… apart from the soreness of being struck with a metal whip, nothing else happened. Not Mickey Rourke looked as confused as Alice was as the electricity simply failed to melt through her skin.

“…I… am IMMUNE TO ELECTRICITY!” Alice shrieked, amazed to have discovered a new superpower this late in the game. She gave a bloodthirsty grin to Not Mickey Rourke as Happy backed up and drove forward several more times, attempting to put him out of commission for good… until the whip in his right hand lashed out, splitting the car neatly in half, barely missing Pepper, Happy, and Tony’s suitcase suit.

Alice moved forward, again intending to pluck out Not Mickey Rourke’s arc reactor. He tried to withdraw the left whip, but Alice had a good tight hold on it. So… he lashed out with the right whip, and it wrapped itself neatly around Alice’s neck. Immune to electricity or no, she still needed to breathe, and the material comprising the whips was tough enough stuff that she found she couldn’t pry it from her constricted airways or snap it altogether. Without her firm grip on the left whip, he retracted it, then sent it around Alice’s neck too, and pulled back hard, sending her eyes bulging out and her face turning purple.

Just before she lost consciousness, Tony hit Not Mickey Rourke with a repulsor blast (having suited up while Alice was being strangled), disorienting the villain long enough for Tony to rush in and yank the arc reactor from its spot on his chest. The electricity died out, and Tony grabbed the man and swung him over his head, slamming him forcibly into the pavement, the whips falling away from Alice’s neck, allowing her to wheeze in great big beautiful bucketfuls of air once more.

The crowd cheered and applauded as the local equivalent of SWAT rushed in to apprehend the guy. Alice rubbed her neck as Tony analyzed, then destroyed, the arc reactor. Not Mickey Rourke spit a gout of blood Alice’s way. “Goddamn Super Soldiers!” he swore.

“Hey Abernathy,” Happy said, taking off his suit jacket and handing it to her, eyes averted. “You might wanna put this on.”

“Oh? Why?” Alice looked down and realized that not just her dress had burnt away, but the bra beneath as well, leaving her in the extremely pedestrian underoos she’d put on that morning. “Oh, right, tits,” she said, gratefully taking the jacket and putting it on.

“That was… that was something, huh?” he said. “So what, I guess you’re like a surge protector?” he joked.

Alice opened her mouth to answer… and then the answer shot through her skull at the speed of light. Her mouth kept opening wider… and wider… and wider… and as the massive grin resolved itself along with the rest of the look of sheer joy on her face, she thrust her fists triumphantly into the air. “BEHOLD, CITIZENS OF MONACO! I AM SURGE PROTECTOR, THE WORLD’S NEWEST SUPERHERO!”

“…Aw hell,” Happy grumbled. Should have kept his big mouth shut.

***

Alice was waiting for news on what to do next in her hotel room. The paramedics had checked her out, but apart from numerous bruises on her neck and chest (which were already fading), found nothing wrong with her. All she really had to do was go back to the hotel, shower, and put on some new clothes.

She was the best off of Whip Guy’s victims. Several of the racers had left the track in body bags, and the race’s organizers had cancelled the rest of the event out of respect to them.

There was a quick series of knocks at the door, followed by Tony letting himself in. “Let’s go, Pretty in Pink,” he said, turning and leaving as abruptly as he’d arrived.

“Where are we going?” Alice asked.

“We’re gonna go see him,” Tony said. All his charming playfulness was gone. This was serious business time.

“We? Me too?” Alice asked. “Are Happy and Miss Potts coming?”

Tony shook his head. “Nah. This is superhero business, after all.” He shot her an affectionate look, the ghost of a smile on his face. “I already had JARVIS arrange for the paperwork. As of twenty minutes ago, ‘Surge Protector’ has been trademarked by one Alice Abernathy for the purposes of your heroics.”

Alice couldn’t restrain herself. She embraced Tony in a quick hug. “Thank you, Mr. Stark,” she said.

He held up one hand. “Don’t worry about it, I owed you one for saving my life. And hey, when it’s superhero business, Tony’s fine,” he assured her.

“Tony,” Alice agreed, smiling.

Happy was going with them, at least in terms of being the chauffeur. He was silent, lost in his own thoughts as were Tony and Alice. The police escort soon pulled to a stop in front of the police station and Happy opened the door for the two of them, then got back behind the wheel.

Tony and the lead detective exchanged a few sentences in French as they walked through the police station, until they were finally deposited into a room with Not Mickey Rourke, who sat there with his back to the door.

Tony walked around to his field of vision. “Pretty decent tech,” he started out. “Cycles per second were a little low.” He came to a stop. “You could have doubled up your rotations.”

Alice leaned in close to Tony and murmured, “Do you really wanna give this guy helpful tips for the next time he goes on a killing spree?”

Tony ignored her and walked a few steps closer. “You focused the repulsor energy through ionized plasma channels. It’s effective. Not very efficient. But it’s a passable knockoff.” He sat down on the bench.

Alice walked into his field of view and again he spat. “Goddamn Super Soldiers,” he repeated, resigned instead of furious.

Alice frowned. “What do you know about Super Soldiers?” Alice asked. “Have you met any?”

“One,” Whip Guy answered. “In prison, met Red Guardian. Man is total asshole.”

Tony narrowed his eyes. “So the Soviets really made their own Captain America? Huh. I guess those old rumors were true.” He shook his head. “I don’t get it, though. A little fine tuning, you could have made a solid paycheck. You could have sold it to North Korea, China, Iran…”

“Hammer Industries,” Alice pointed out.

Tony nodded in acknowledgment. “Or gone right to the black market. You look like you got friends in low places.”

Not Mickey Rourke’s attention was entirely on Tony now. “You come from a family of thieves and butchers,” he denounced. “And now, like all guilty men, you try to rewrite your own history. And you forget all the lives the Stark family has destroyed.”

“Speaking of thieves, where did you get this design?” Tony asked, not deigning to respond to the charges against him.

“My father,” Not Mickey Rooney said. “Anton Vanko.”

“Well, I never heard of him,” Tony admitted.

“My father is the reason you’re alive,” Vanko the younger said, glancing down at the light of Tony’s arc reactor shining through his shirt.

“The reason I’m alive is because you had a shot, you took it, you missed,” Tony pointed out.

“Did I?” Vanko asked pointedly.

“Yeah, he sure as hell didn’t,” Alice said, rubbing her bruised neck for emphasis.

Vanko scoffed at her before turning back to Tony. “If you can make God bleed, the people will cease to believe in him.”

“Uh oh, somebody better tell that to Jesus!” Alice said. “I’m pretty sure that’s his entire schtick!”

Vanko ignored her. “And there will be blood in the water. And the sharks will come.” A smile briefly crossed his face. “The truth, all I have to do is sit here and watch, as the world will consume you.”

“Where will you be watching the world consume me from?” Tony asked. “That’s right, a prison cell. I’ll send you a bar of soap.”

“Tony, let’s not make jokes about prison rape,” Alice said curtly. “Is your daddy still around?” she asked Vanko. “Any other loved ones?”

“My father is dead,” Vanko said. “The only other creature on this Earth I care about… is bord.”

Alice’s eyes went wide. “…A bird,” she echoed.

“Bord,” Vanko confirmed.

“Okay, Tony, can we just kill this guy now, because he’s obviously the fucking Antichrist,” Alice gritted out through clenched teeth.

Tony stood and gestured for Alice to follow. As they approached the door, Vanko had one last parting shot. “Hey Tony, before you go… palladium in the chest, painful way to die.”

Tony glanced Alice’s way, noting the lack of surprise on her face. He rapped on the door so the cops would come let them out. He left, but Alice lingered a moment longer. “I’ll… I’ll see if we can get your… your bird taken care of,” Alice said, exerting great effort to not say ‘fucking monstrous hellbeast’ instead of ‘bird’. “And I’m sorry about your dad.”

Vanko was touched. “Thank you… Super Soldier asshole.” He shot her another rueful look.

Alice smirked despite herself and left the room.