King of Infinite Space, part III

[elspethdixon]

Title: King of Infinite Space 3/7
Authors: seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony.
Warnings: Nothing. Yet.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: A villain from Tony's past comes back to cause trouble for the Avengers. Maybe it wouldn't have been so easy, if thing weren't already so awkward over the events of Execute Program.

X-posted to marvel_slash.

And of course, thanks to tavella for the great beta job.


King of Infinite Space


Chapter Three



Arnold Hathart was being interviewed on Dateline, blathering on about superheroes and vigilantism and mutants being unnatural and blah, blah, blah. Why hadn't anyone gotten up to change the channel yet, Peter wondered plaintively. He'd expected Tony to make some kind of scathing remark and change the channel with his brain at least five minutes ago.

Instead, Tony was staring off into space with this kind of zombie-look. He'd been doing that a lot for the last couple of days. Either all of this was really starting to get to him, or he was designing something incredibly complicated in his head.

"You know," Peter commented, "you'd think at least one of these reporters would have read the Bible, because I'm pretty sure none of the stuff he's quoting is actually in it."

"You've never read the Bible verse about superpowers being temptations put in man's path by Satan?" MJ asked, raising her eyebrows in mock surprise. "It's in Leviticus, right after the part that forbids you to eat shrimp or wear cotton-poly blends."

The two of them were sitting together on the small couch, the one that was usually reserved for Cap and Tony, who had both opted to take the armchairs this evening. The small couch had the best view of the television, which explained why the New Avengers' leaders had staked it out as theirs, despite the fact that it was about three feet shorter than the other couch, and required you to sit right next to the person you were sharing it with; if you were sharing it with Luke or Cap, it turned into a loveseat. Peter didn't mind; it gave him an excuse to put an arm around MJ's shoulders.

He wrinkled his nose. "I never read that part. It was boring." He'd almost gotten kicked out of the Sunday school class Aunt May had made him go to as a kid for daydreaming during class and asking the teacher too many questions ("When did God create the dinosaurs? And the trilobites? And the wooly mammoths? Was it all on the same day? Because the lady at the museum said it was millions of years apart. Is a day for God longer than a normal day?"). On the slim chance that he ever needed information from the Bible, Peter figured he could always just ask Matt Murdock, who was Catholic and therefore had probably been taught by nuns or something.

"Why do people listen to him?" Peter went on, waving a hand at the television. He directed the question to the room at large, not really expecting an answer. Sure enough, none was forthcoming.

MJ shrugged; Peter could feel her shoulders move up and down slightly against his arm.

He turned to Tony. "Hey, any idea why people are actually listening to this guy?"

Tony didn't answer, still staring off into space with a slight frown drawing a line between his eyebrows.

"I mean," Peter tried again, "respectable news station-type people instead of angry-mob type people?"

Tony continued to ignore him, and Peter was contemplating tossing a piece of webbing at him to get his attention when Cap spoke up.

"Something about him is familiar," he said softly, staring at the tv screen, where Hathart was trading platitudes with a Dateline interviewer.

MJ snorted. "Of course it is. He's been on every radio show and talk show for the past month. You can't escape him. Believe me, I've tried."

Cap shook his head, still frowning at the screen. "No, the way he talks, those gestures, the way all those people start nodding along with him. I've seen that before, and not from someone giving a sermon, either."

"In an infomercial selling Bibles for nine ninety-five?" Peter suggested cheerfully. MJ was the only one who even smiled. No one appreciated him.

There was a sharp trill of sound as the cordless phone sitting on the end table rang. Cap stood up and crossed the room in two strides, scooping the phone up from its spot at Tony's elbow and answering it on the second ring. "Avengers Tower." He turned to Tony, holding a hand over the receiver, and said in a loud whisper, "How do you turn off the speakerphone? This thing has too many buttons."

Tony half-turned, looking up at him and blinking. Before he could answer, a depressingly familiar voice barked,

"One of you people get me Captain America, or whoever your leader is this week."

Jameson. Oh God, what did he want? Peter waved his hands in a desperate negative motion, mouthing, "Don't tell him I'm here."

"Speaking," Cap said dryly.

"Right," J. Jonah Jameson snapped, speaking to Cap in the same peremptory bark he used on the Bugle staff, "I have something useful for you people to do. I've been looking into this crusade of Stone's, put one of my best people on it, and the whole thing stinks like roadkill in July."

"One of Jameson's best people" probably meant Ben Urich, which meant Jameson was actually concerned about this. Ben usually covered front page news, so if J.J. had put him on this anti-superhuman thing... Jameson loathed superheroes more than the entire criminal population of the Raft put together, so it followed that Tiberius Stone's news magazines were cutting into the Bugle's circulation.

"Don't get me wrong, I agree that people like you are dangerous; I've been saying it for years," Jameson went on, "but I don't approve of pretty boys like Stone using the media to advance their own private crusades."

Peter snorted at this blatant hypocrisy, but Jameson was on a roll now, speaking too quickly for anyone to interrupt. Cap was holding the phone a good foot away from his ear, wincing at each particularly loud shout.

"He's sullying the good name of the profession, using all those magazines and news stations he owns as his private mouthpiece. None of them have touched anything else for the past week, not even the war in Iraq or the city elections. I run hard-hitting journalism about who's taking bribes this month, and everyone ignores it to read Stone's rags, where this Reverend guy is spouting pseudo-religious hoo-ha."

"And what would you like us to do about this, Mr. Jameson?" Cap asked dryly.

Jameson continued as if he hadn't spoken. "You see people like him on late-night tv with Tammy Fay Baker, selling Bibles for nine-ninety-five. They don't make it onto 60 Minutes and Dateline. I want to know how the hell this crackpot is getting onto reputable news outlets instead of staying on AM radio and public access cable where he belongs. So I did some looking, and I found not one record of this guy that goes back further than two months. He came out of nowhere. He's never even paid federal income tax."

Tony looked up at Cap, eyebrows raised. "No wonder I couldn't find anything on him."

"Wow," Peter said, forgetting to stay quiet so that Jameson couldn't hear him. "If even the IRS can't get him, he must be a supervillain."

"Or in the mob," MJ offered.

"You think he's using a false identity?" Cap asked Jameson.

"I know he is. And I think you people should look into it. It's not my problem; it's your problem. It's your business to make sure these rumormongers stop discrediting legitimate journalism." There was a loud click as he hung up, then the hollow silence of an empty line. Peter wasn't sure how Jameson managed to push a button loudly; it was a special talent.

"Ha!" he snorted. "Legitimate journalism. He wouldn't know legitimate journalism if it danced naked in front of him waving a sign."

"My God," Cap said. He was still holding the phone, staring off into the distance much the way Tony had been earlier. "Rumormonger," he repeated, shaking his head. "The Hate-Monger. That's who he reminds me of. I didn't make the connection without the damn Klan mask, but that's it." He tossed the phone onto the end table so hard that it went skidding across it and fell off onto the floor with a clatter. "Stone's DreamVision was essentially a mind-control device, right? The Hate-Monger used mind control, too, and he stirred people up just like this."

Tony looked up, shoulders going tense. "Are you sure? I thought he turned into energy and dissolved."

"Wait," Peter interrupted, "the guy in the purple Klan costume? Yeah, I thought he was dead."

"He is," Cap said grimly. "But before he was brought back by the Cosmic Cube and turned into energy, he had a machine that influenced people's minds. Arnim Zola built the original model, but if Zola could build it, I'd bet that Stone could duplicate it; he's already worked on mind-control technology. If I'm right, he could make this escalate from picketers and sermons to anti-mutant riots and lynchings very quickly. That's how the original Hate-Monger worked."

"Great," Tony muttered. "So now people can be lynched because Tiberius is holding a grudge against me." He shook his head, running one hand through his hair, then turned to Cap. "Sorry. How do you want to handle this?" He sighed, shoulders slumping. "There's nothing on Hathart, and Tiberius has been milking the fact that he's a harmless philanthropist in a wheelchair for all it's worth. If we go after him and accuse him of being a terrorist with some kind of hate machine, we'll be playing right into his hands."

He had a point. If even Jameson couldn't find any dirt on this "Reverend," there wasn't anything to find. "Um," Peter raised his hand, speaking up hesitantly, "are you guys sure you're not just jumping to conclusions here?"

Tony turned back to the television screen, tilting his head to the side slightly. "You know, now that I look at it, that purple tie Hathart wears to all of these interviews is a repeating pattern that consists entirely of the letter H over and over."

"That could be a coincidence," Peter pointed out. "Because his name starts with an H. It's not like you need a Hate Ray to be a creepy religious fundamentalist and get other people to agree with you."

"It may be nothing but a coincidence," Cap said, "but I don't think we can take that chance."

"Hey," MJ interrupted, "Isn't he holding some kind of revival thing in Madison Square Gardens this Tuesday?"

Cap nodded. "I saw the flyers for it. We can go incognito -- except you, Peter, I want you waiting in the rafters in case I'm right. If I'm completely off base and Hathart is just spouting rhetoric and nothing else, we'll leave quietly. If not..." he turned to Tony, "if there was some form of technological mind control being used, could you detect it?"

Tony nodded, offering Cap a half-hearted-looking smile. "It's a good thing I have the Extremis now. Otherwise, I'd have to actually be in the armor to do it, and that would rule out any hope of subtlety. I can use the Extremis to scan for any kind of anomalous energy signal being broadcast, and analyze it against the Controller's beams and the old Hate Ray. We'll want to get there early and stay to the rear of the crowd."

"We can station Luke and Logan by the doors," Cap said. "Just in case things turn nasty, and we need to get the crowd out quickly. You, Jessica, and I can blend in with the crowd."

"Ooh," MJ sat up straighter, "can I come? I've always wanted to go undercover." She grinned impishly at Peter. "I can be your browbeaten little woman."

"Only if you don't wear make-up," Peter told her solemnly. "God doesn't approve of make-up."

She arched her eyebrows. "Who said I wore make-up?"

"Your eyebrows are red and your eyelashes are black."

MJ set one hand against Peter's shoulder and shoved him. "I'm a red-headed actress. Mascara is a necessity. It's a hazard of being redheaded or blonde; look at Cap, he's got no eyelashes at all."

Cap blinked. His eyelashes were, in fact, very blond, Peter realized. It wasn't normally the sort of thing Peter paid any attention to. "Daredevil doesn't have eyelashes, either," Peter volunteered. Though he wasn't sure if that was because Matt's eyelashes were light enough to be invisible, or if they'd been burned off when he was blinded.

"Why are we talking about my eyelashes?" Cap asked, looking slightly confused. "You can come," he told MJ, "but you may need to leave very quickly if things go badly, and you should stay by one of us, just in case."

"Fine by me," MJ said, shrugging. "Getting attacked by an angry mob isn't high on my list of things to do before I'm thirty."



***



If he brought the armor with him, then even with it in the briefcase, he could still access the armor through the Extremis and use its external sensors to scan for any energy signals. Tony frowned absently as he strode across Stark Enterprises' lobby, trying to decide which of a dozen filtering processes would be mostly likely to isolate a Hate-Ray or Hate-Ray equivalent's energy transmissions.

He probably ought to be concentrating on the board meeting he was about to walk into, but this was more interesting. It also beat thinking about everything else; he was so tired, tired of nightmares, tired of worrying about what Tiberius would try next, worn down by the guilt that had been eating at him ever since he'd come to after the destruction of the airline flight and realized what he'd done. He wanted so badly to just spill everything to Steve; under other circumstances, Tony could have told him everything and Steve, in that way he had of always seeing the positive in something, would have been able to make things seem less dire.

But things with Steve were... they couldn't talk to each other right now, not after what Tony had done and what Tiberius had said. Not unless they were fighting something or planning a fight. Steve kept giving him these looks, considering, oddly hurt looks.

He had been openly appalled at Ty's revelation of their past together, and just as obviously disbelieving. Tony suspected he was starting to re-evaluate that conclusion, though, given the way Steve had conspicuously avoided spending any time alone with him since then.

Steve was one of the most accepting and open-minded people Tony knew, but he did come from an earlier time, even if it was easy to forget that most of the time, and everyone had their limits.

Tony pressed the button for the elevator, and watched the lights over the doors move as the car descended. A dark, waivery reflection formed in the polished brass doors as someone came up behind him. As he watched, the blurry shape resolved into a tall, stocky bald man with a dark mustache.

Tony spun around, to find the lobby almost entirely empty, save for the security guard still sitting at his station by the door. No bald men, Russian or otherwise.

It must have been a trick of the light. For a second, the indistinct image in the door had looked like Vanko, the original Crimson Dynamo.

The dreams were obviously starting to get to him. Vanko's death had featured prominently in last night's batch, the Russian scientist throwing himself in front of Tony and taking the energy blast meant for him, while Tony had stood motionless, frozen, unable to do anything.

He hadn't thought about Vanko in years. He'd convinced the other man to defect, to betray his country; they wouldn't have come after him if only Tony had left well enough alone.

The elevator chimed softly. When Tony turned to face it, the reflection, whatever it had actually been, had vanished.

The afternoon did not improve from there.

"SE stock has dropped four points since this superhero debacle started," Layton announced, frowning portentously. He always looked like a frog when he did that, Tony reflected. "Thanks to your employment of Iron Man and the fact that you fund the Avengers, people associate SE and our products with superheroes."

Ms. Grant nodded, tapping a sheaf of papers with one fingernail. "And now that people have begun calling for government legislation to deal with superhuman powers, you can be sure that public opinion will sour even further. It may be time to consider disassociating ourselves from the whole business, before our shareholders begin to suffer for it."

Considering that Grant and Layton owned approximately a third of the Stark Enterprises shares (not counting the fifty-one percent of stock which Tony owned himself), he strongly suspected that their concern for the shareholders extended mostly to their own pockets.

"What do you suggest we do?" Tony asked.

Grant leaned forward, arching an eyebrow. "Fire Iron Man. You know the company has never been entirely comfortable with him. People would see it as a sign of good faith."

"And cut the funding to the New Avengers; they no longer have government sanction, and their presence in our building does nothing for stockholder confidence." Layton stabbed a pudgy finger in Tony's direction, frown deepening.

It went on in that vein for several minutes. It was nothing Tony hadn't heard before, so he composed his face into an expression that hopefully conveyed bland interest and stared over the board members' heads at the conference room's floor to ceiling windows.

It was a dim, cloudy day, the late October weather just starting to turn cold, and the conference table and assembled board members were reflected faintly in the polarized glass, their shapes ghostly against the slightly wavery skyline.

Tony occupied himself by located each of the board's reflection. Layton, the round glasses and bad haircut distinctive. Canete, the dark grey of his suit and bright green and yellow of his tie standing out even in the washed-out reflection. Grant, her dark blonde hair swept up in a severe bun. Tony had always thought she looked like a school marm in Armani. Very briefly, when he'd first become head of the company, he'd entertained thoughts of getting her out of the Armani and her hair down out of that bun. At that point, she'd seemed like an alluringly sophisticated older woman; in reality, she'd probably only been in her thirties, close to the age he was now.

He had been a very stupid twenty-two year old. Her contempt for him, at least, had been earned.

It took Tony a moment to place the dark-haired young woman sitting next to her; there were no women with black hair on the board -- no men with hair that dark, either.

Rumiko turned her head slightly, meeting Tony's eyes in the glass, and smiled a familiar, flirtatious smile. The one she'd always given him when they were trapped at dull social functions and she wanted him to drag her into an out of the way corner and make things more interesting.

Tony froze, staring at her, unable to process anything else. It took a Herculean effort to keep his expression under control, to keep the rest of the room from realizing that anything was wrong. He was still distantly aware of the board talking, knew he couldn't visibly react.

He blinked, hard, and she was gone.

Everyone at the table was staring at him.

"So, we're agreed then? Mr. Stark?" Canete said, with the sound a man repeating himself, possibly not for the first time. "You'll terminate your contract with Iron Man?"

"I'm not firing Iron Man," Tony said flatly. "And I'm certainly not cutting off my funding of the Avengers -- which comes from my own pocket and not company finances. Do we have any actual business to talk about? How about the satellite phone? You people like the satellite phone."

Predictably, things only went downhill from there.

Several hostile minutes later, Tony finally escaped the conference room. He had no idea what he'd said to them after the crack about the phone; no idea what anyone had said. It must have been acceptable, though, because no one followed him down the hall. It was a good thing he had experience navigating business meetings while in less-than-optimal shape.

He couldn't afford to go crazy right now. Couldn't afford to be compromised again.

People had died last time. Steve had nearly died. Rumiko had died. It hadn't been him, but it had still been his fault.

She had been so real. He'd half-expected to turn and find her sitting at the conference table beside Grant, yawning and tapping her watch, waiting impatiently for him to take her out to some expensive restaurant, or a trendy club she would then decide to leave in an hour, once she remembered that Tony hated them.

She was dead, just like Vanko was dead. What was wrong with him? Why was this happening?

He'd dreamt of Rumiko before, dreamt of Vanko, too. And Yin Sen, and Ayisha, and Erwin and Clytemnestra Morley, and all of the other people whose deaths he was responsible for. He'd never seen them when he was awake, though.

Tony hurried past Pepper's desk, not looking at her, and into his office, shutting the door behind him. He collapsed into the desk chair, resting his elbows on the desk and letting his head drop into his hands.

He couldn't go insane. He couldn't. What was he going to do?

Maybe he was letting himself panic over nothing, Tony reasoned, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing at his eyelids until flashes of color started appearing in the darkness. Maybe he just needed a night of uninterrupted sleep.

Maybe... last time this had happened, last time he'd started seeing things, he'd been under Kang's influence, forced to hurt his friends yet again. People had died -- people always died; for him, or because of him -- and the team had understandably wanted nothing to do with him. Then Onslaught had come, though he didn't remember that part. He remembered the last big fight, however, and apologizing to Steve, and the strange alternate dimension Reed Richard's kid had sent them too.

He remembered it, even if no one else did. People had died for him there, too. Raider, blown up and tortured, and all because he'd been Tony's friend, because Tony's subconscious had created him to fill the void that was supposed to filled by Steve and Rhodey -- and Tiberius.

If the others knew, they would insist that he leave the team. He should; should tell Steve, should take himself off the Avengers' roster. It was the responsible thing to do. The safe thing to do.

He had nowhere else to go. If the Avengers threw him out, he would have no one. Pepper and Happy would leave, too, to be safe, and Steve... Steve would be disappointed in him. He couldn't disappoint Steve. Not again.

He needed air. The balcony was a good place for that.

Tony opened his eyes and stood, turning -- and then he halted, one hand on the back of his desk chair.

Raider grinned at him from the window, his reflection standing on the other side of Tony's desk, hands in his pockets. It was the same casual pose he'd often assumed when waiting for Tony to finish some bit of business or lab work.

It took everything Tony had to turn around. Raider was not actually there, not standing three feet away about to tease Tony for overworking himself again, because Raider didn't exist.

When he finally forced himself to look, the office was empty, as he'd known it would be.

Tony sagged back into his chair, covering his eyes with his hands once more. This wasn't real. None of it was real. He would get a good night's sleep, and in the morning, all of this would be gone.

And he wasn't going to drink himself to sleep, either, even if that would have stopped the nightmares.

Oh God, Tony thought again. What am I going to do?



***



"Are you getting anything?" Steve asked.

He and Tony were standing near one of the left side exits of the Madison Square Gardens arena, Tony in plainclothes with briefcase in hand and Steve maskless, with his costume concealed under a trench coat, listening to Reverend Albert Hathart warm up the crowd.

He had just begun his opening remarks, and already, Steve's dislike of the man had doubled. Somehow, seeing him in person made him seem even more petty and irritating.

Tony shook his head. "Sorry." He offered Steve a small smile that looked oddly strained. "You'd think I could at least do that much, huh?" He shifted the briefcase to his other hand, continuing, "Nothing yet, but he's just gotten started; I'm going to need more time to take readings. He'll probably raise the intensity as he goes along, anyway. Give me a few more minutes before we get out of here."

Tony looked tired, worn around the edges. Steve briefly wondered if things were going badly at Stark Enterprises again, the way they had last time Stone had started playing games. If there was one thing Tony never doubted, it was his engineering ability.

"If there's anything to find, you'll find it," Steve said. Even if Tony had no romantic interest in him, he was still one of Steve's closest friends.

Steve scanned the crowd, a surprisingly diverse mass who filled the arena to nearly three-quarters capacity. Reverend Hathart, if he was using the Hate-Monger's technology, clearly practiced a different brand of small-minded hatred than his predecessor; the crowd was not exclusively white, blond, and blue-eyed. Most disturbing of all were the children and teenagers scattered throughout the crowd.

If a riot actually did break out, getting the children out would have to be their first priority.

There weren't enough New Avengers to cover every exit, so they had tried to space themselves evenly around the perimeter of the room, staying as far from the stage as possible to put themselves on the outside radius of any prospective mind control devices.

Steve scanned the visible exits, easily picking out Luke, who towered head and shoulders above the people around him. Steve could also make out Jessica Drew by the far right wall, and Jessica Jones, across the arena from Luke. He found MJ by her flamingly red hair, and knew that Peter would be in the rafters directly above her. He couldn't see Logan, who was too short to stand out in a crowd, but he was supposed to be by the main exit. Hopefully, he was in position.

No one was sure how Hathart had managed to book Madison Square Gardens on such short notice. He'd even managed to boot an early-season basketball game out of the arena. Predictably, despite extensive searching on Tony's part, he hadn't been able to find any connection to Tiberius Stone.

"For by their deeds you shall know them," Harthart proclaim, in ringing tones. "By their deeds and nothing else, it seems. Why do they walk about in masks, hiding their identities? Honest men have no need to hide their faces from their neighbors."

People like this always harped on the masks, as if the very notion of hiding your identity when you took on someone like the Green Goblin or the Kingpin was shocking and done with sinister intent in mind. And yet heads all around the arena were nodding, and there were even a few scattered cheers.

All these people seemed to have completely forgotten that there were any number of heroes who didn't wear mask -- from Luke Cage to the Fantastic Four -- and numerous others who did, but didn't have a secret identity. Steve himself didn't. Hank and Jan didn't. Carol, Simon, most of the X-Men.

"They hide walk among us, unseen, unnoticed, spreading their plague, wielding powers God never intended mankind to possess. The Bible tells us, he who does what is sinful is of the devil. And no one who is born of God will continue to sin. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God!"

Oh, come on, Steve thought. Why stop there? Why not read the next line, "and neither is anyone who does not love his brother." He hated people like this. People who took the Bible and warped it to justify their own twisted prejudices.

"...seducing our children into unnatural practices..."

"Oh, screw that," MJ's voice muttered through the commlink. "I'm the one who seduced Peter. Wait, is this thing on?"

There was a moment of crackling silence, then, "What unnatural practices are the two of you getting up to?" Luke asked.

"I'm going to die now, okay?" Peter's voice said, plaintively.

"If we do nothing, our children will grow up idolizing these deviants, admiring violent vigilantes and criminals and believing that these behaviors are not only acceptable, but laudable."

And now he was exhorting people to "think of the children." And even if Steve himself hadn't been what was considered bisexual by this era's standards, he would still have been able to pick up on the blatant subtext underlying all of Hathart's accusation of "unnatural practices." Steve clenched his hands into fists, glowering at the podium. People like Hathart were everything that was wrong with America. Nasty, petty, small-minded bigots who--

Was that Logan growling through the commlink?

Admittedly, not an unexpected response from Logan given the rhetoric being spouted, but going by the intensity of his own reaction, Steve was willing to bet that, yes, Hathart had a hate-ray.

"I'm picking up an energy signature now," Tony said, "and scans confirm that it's consistent with the Hate-Monger's." He was staring at the stage, wearing the blank expression that he occasionally got when accessing the Extremis. Steve didn't like how distant it made him look.

He still wasn't sure how he felt about the Extremis. It had saved Tony's life, but was also what had allowed that insane hacker to use Tony -- and through him, his armor -- as a weapon so effectively. And Tony had been... different, since acquiring it. Distant. Steve wasn't sure what all of these new powers might be doing to him.

"And I ask what I know we must all be asking: how can any of us be safe with people who are capable of these things running around uncontrolled, unidentified."

There was a loud cheer, and Hathart raised his arms to signal for silence. "People who can level buildings, cause explosions, influence our thoughts and feelings. Some of them can barely even be counted as human. For the good of society, for their own good, these people need to be contained, controlled."

"You mean, like they did in Genosha and Madripoor?" Logan shouted, his voice carrying across the arena with unfortunate clarity.

Steve exchanged glances with Tony, seeing his own sudden wince reflected in Tony's face. "You're the one who insisted we needed him," he said.

"Hawkeye would have said something worse," Tony pointed out, softly. "And you can't tell me you weren't about to accuse him of being a Nazi."

"Not in those exact words," Steve hedged, suddenly feeling slightly defensive -- but still angry, underneath that. Knowing that a Hate-Ray was being used didn't isolate you from its effects.

Reverend Hathart swung about to face the section of the crowd Logan's shout had come from, smiling benevolently in a way that made Steve want to knock his teeth out. "Nothing so extreme as that. The Genoshans had laudable intentions at the outset, but they took things too far. The incident at Madripoor was a terrible tragedy, and proof of just how sorely legislation to control superhumans is needed, so that that kind of disaster doesn't occur here."

"Oh, blame the victims," MJ snarled through the commlink. "Pompous hypocritical jackass."

"Sing it, sister," Jessica Jones muttered.

"Tragedy, hell!" an unidentified voice said loudly somewhere to Steve's right. "It was genocide!"

'The freaks got what was coming to them," a mid-forties woman in a navy blue business suit snapped.

"Yeah?" the first voice repeated, and Steve could pinpoint its owner now, a young man in faded blue jeans and a t-shirt from some band Steve couldn't identify. He stepped forward, jaw set, invading the woman's personal space. "And I suppose the Holocaust victims got what was coming to them, too."

"Don't call her a Nazi, you little punk." The man who'd been sitting next to the woman in the blue suit stepped forward and shoved the young man backwards, sending him staggering into another spectator.

Given the rising noise of the crowd, this sort of confrontation must be happening all over the arena. Steve caught Tony's arm. "How quickly can you shut Hathart's device down?"

Tony frowned. "It's not digital. It's older technology, transistors or maybe even vacuum tubes. All it does is broadcast a sustained signal on a specific frequency."

"Like an evil radio," Peter observed, via the commlink.

"I can't hack it," Tony went on. "We have to either get up close and overload its circuits or take it out physically."

Steve nodded. "How big a distraction do you need?"

"Something big enough to let me get onto the stage."

One of the nearby spectators threw a punch, fist catching another man on the jaw. Behind his podium, Hathart was making no move to halt the increasing chaos, watching the crowd and smiling.

"Leave that to me," Steve said grimly. He might as well take a page from Logan's book; it would be extremely satisfying, if nothing else. He locked eyes with Tony, who nodded slightly, and then he stepped forward, pulling on his mask and pushing his way through the crowd until he could be seen from the stage.

Behind him, Tony was speaking to the others, his voice coming to Steve only through the commlink now that the crowd had blocked him from earshot. "Cap's going to out the good Reverend. Be ready for the reaction, and make sure he can't run."

"You know, we really need to start planning these things," Spiderwoman observed. "Or at least following what little plan we have."

"You're enjoying this, aren't you, Hathart!" Steve yelled. He could make his voice carry when he needed to, and heads turned all over the arena. With the trench coat shrugged off and tossed aside, he would be very visible. "Why don't you tell everyone what you're really doing?"

Hathart's head snapped around, and his eyes widened as he saw Steve. He recovered quickly, though, Steve would give him that.

Hathart threw up one arm to point dramatically in Steve's direction, thundering, "We will not be silenced by intimidation! Take your masks and your bullying tactics and leave!"

"You accuse superheroes of manipulating people's minds," Steve went on, overriding him. "Of using their powers to corrupt people. Why don't you tell them what you've been doing with the Hate-Monger's little toy? Or is mind-control not a sin when you're doing it?"

"I am controlling no one," Hathart proclaimed, stepping away from the podium and holding out his hands. "Merely inspiring them to righteous wrath. Sometimes the only way to fight the devil is with his own tools!" He turned away from Steve addressing the entire crowd once more. "You have all come to have the fire of conviction kindled within you. Search your hearts, and deal with this sinner as God leads you to!"

The noise of the crowd surged as people around Steve turned on him, snarling and shouting. Steve ducked backwards, out of the way of a punch, only to see another spectator shove the man who'd attempted to hit him. Then everyone was yelling and hitting each other, the audience having reached the flashpoint where people ceased to be a crowd and became a mob.

This was not good. People were going to get hurt. They were supposed to be preventing this. "Luke," Steve barked into the commlink, "Wolverine, Spiderman, start getting people out of here, starting with the children. Spiderwomen, make sure he doesn't leave."

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw a tall, red-headed man drawing his arm back to cold-cock the shorter, darker-skinned woman across the aisle from him.

Steve turned, and caught the man's fist in mid-swing. "Don't," he said, tightening his grip warningly.

The man deflated instantly.

Below him, Tony had pushed his way onto the stage, and Steve saw him call the armor in a sudden whirlwind of red and gold.

A man in a business suit went flying onto the stage, slamming into the podium and knocking it over to reveal a large, boxy electronic device nearly two feet square.

"That was convenient," Tony's voice observed. He lifted the unconscious man up and handed him off to Spiderwoman, who had materialized out of the crowd at his elbow, street clothes replaced by red and yellow spandex.

Hathart, who had already jumped back from the edge of the stage when the man had landed, took one look at them and turned to flee into the crowd.

He wasn't going anywhere, not if Steve had anything to say about it.

Steve was on the arena floor, about fifteen feet away from the stage the stage. He shook his arm lose from someone's grasp, barely feeling the punch that landed in his ribs when as he did so, shoved his way through the crowd, and then grabbed a corner of the stage and vaulted up onto it, landing in a crouch in front of Hathart. He didn't have his shield -- they hadn't expected this to end in a riot, hadn't wanted to escalate thing by bringing weapons if it had -- but he didn't need it for this.

"Going somewhere?" Steve said, grabbing Hathart by the front of his shirt and getting a fist full of ugly purple tie. Harthart kicked ineffectually at his right shin, and Steve threw a hard right jab at his jaw.

It felt wonderful. Harthart sagged, Steve grinned, and then, over Hathart's shoulder, he saw Tony step drop to one knee and lay a hand against the front of the hate-ray.

The explosion was deafening.

There was a moment of silence, as everyone turned to stare at the smoking remains of the hate-ray. Tony was on the floor ext to it, knocked flat by the force of the explosion, not moving.

The smoke alarm went off, someone screamed, and suddenly, everyone was shoving for the exits.

Peter dropped down from the rafters, landing next to him. "That wasn't part of the plan, was it?" he asked. "because I don't remember any explosions in the plan."

Steve thrust Hathart toward him and took off for where Tony was still lying like a broken toy, not answering.

As Steve reached him, Tony sat up, swayed, putting one gauntleted hand against the side of his helmet. Steve felt a vast wave of relief sweep through him, leaving him almost weak-kneed for a second. It was instantly replaced by a deep desire to shake Tony until he rattled.

"What the hell were you thinking?" he snapped, yanking Tony to his feet. "This place is packed. That explosion could have hurt people." Tony had been standing right next to it. If he hadn't been in the armor, it could have killed him.

"I directed the force of the blast away from the crowd," Tony said flatly. "It was turning into a riot; we needed to get the hate-ray offline right away."

Which didn't explain why he'd felt the need to blow it up from less than a foot away. "We'll talk about this later," Steve said.

Hathart was webbed securely to the stage, and Peter was now up in the rows of seats that had been closest to the explosion, getting people down. MJ and Jessica Jones were helping to corral people out the doors, mostly by pushing at them and yelling. The crowd was still shoving and shouting, but there was clear space by the main exit, where Luke, and, presumably, Logan, had convinced or threatened people into leaving in an orderly single file.

Jessica Drew was reentering the auditorium via the exit Steve and Tony had been by earlier, several security personnel in tow.

The confrontation was over, Steve judged. Now it was time for the cleanup, which he suspected was going to be harder.


***



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{Chapter One} {Chapter Two} {Chapter Three} {Chapter Four} {Chapter Five} {Chapter Six} {Chapter Seven}