Chapter 1
Despite what everyone seems to think, Tony Stark’s shifted form is terrifying.
It’s not until Afghanistan that anyone even knows which parent he took after. The late Howard Stark himself was a proud thunderbird, a wingspan capable of covering a city block in darkness. Everyone assumed that a shifter such as Howard Stark would take on a spouse equivalent to his grandeur.
No one suspected he would pick one greater than himself.
Maria Stark was certainly angelic in appearance and mannerism, so she certainly must be one. A second tier is still amazing.
Oh, how they were wrong. Maria Stark never shared her shifted form with the public, and it was rude to ask, if it wasn’t already blatantly obvious, then it should be left well enough alone.
Howard Stark announces his wife’s pregnancy in the year 1969. America is thrilled. Another Stark will follow the family business and keep the country’s people safe! A proud thunderbird, keen on watching over his own.
Obadiah Stane sneers at the news, another damn top tier in the way of claiming Stark Industries. He drinks three humans dry in his fit of rage, having his assistant, who isn’t paid near enough, get rid of the evidence.
The day Anthony Edward Stark is born, a thunderstorm rages all day. That has to be a good sign right?
No one knows for sure which parent Tony Stark took after. He never shifted, there were never obvious displays in mannerism or appearance. Some brave, drunk souls in college attempted startling him while he passed to get to his dorm. No twitch or bat of an eye, no shift of feathers or glowing eyes, just a raised brow and a “really?” before he went about his business.
Tony Stark was clearly upset he took after his second tier mother and not his top tier father. That must be it.
Tony Stark is an angel, not a thunderbird.
Wrong. Again.
After years of assuming Maria Stark was an angel, decades really, the world learned that Tony Stark really did take after a top tier, who just happened to be his mother.
A month after Tony Stark disappeared in Afghanistan after a weapon’s demonstration, a fire erupts in the rocky hills surrounded by desert. An inferno that stretches for miles in an instant. A shadow passing over the wreckage and ruin, flying to the east toward where it knows something that belongs to it frets and worries, still searching.
Tony Stark was taught from an early age to contain his emotions, construct a mask if he must, conceal what lies beneath. Even a small slip could end in a revert to basic instinct. His mother was taught the same.
Because Tony Stark isn’t a thunderbird. Or an angel.
No…
He’s a dragon.