May 23, 2014

“You look hurt,” Steve said over breakfast one day. We were in the rec room, eating vegetables and turkey breast with Bucky and Sam. I sighed, annoyed. In the background, Sam and Steve’s chosen song, Trouble Man by Marvin Gaye, was playing, with my song of choice following.

“It doesn’t hurt, it just looks ugly as fuck.”

“Language,” Steve said immediately. “And are you sure?”

He looked worried for me. I smiled as best as I could through eyes that were nearly covered by big pink bulges. “It’s not bad. Annoying, really.”

“Does that mean we can make fun of you?” Sam asked with a shit-eating grin.

“No you can’t,” I glared at him. “I’m getting enough of that from Tony and Nat. I ain’t getting more of it from you.”

Bucky grinned. “Hey, at least you know it’ll end soon, right?”

“It was supposed to end early,” I said with a sigh. “But in the same way it started late, it’s taking a while too. At least I know Swampfire is getting stronger. Plus side, that.”

I chewed on a tomato while Sam sighed. “Well, in the meantime, how are you two?” Sam looked at Bucky and Steve. “You guys have been traveling every day so far. Meet anyone interesting?”

“Mostly superspies,” Bucky said with a sigh. “A lot of people who are being pushed to be Avengers for the publicity. It’s been annoying as hell.”

“Bucky,” Steve admonished. “There have been good people too. Men and women who just aren’t Avengers material for real reasons.”

“There’ve also been overconfident jackasses who you had to beat up, one woman who demanded you kick the ‘blacks’ off the team, two women screaming we were anti-feminist for not accepting them, a scientist that tried to kidnap me for my arm, and a rapist that Jarvis exposed,” Bucky pointed out in turn.

“...Well, yes, but at least we caught the last two,” Steve said weakly.

“Are you guys having adventures without the rest of us?” I teased.

“We were having adventures before you were born, kid,” Bucky teased in turn.

“Okay, boomer,” I joked back. “Seriously though, you guys haven’t found anyone since Ares?”

“No one,” Steve sighed. “I’m starting to wonder if our luck has run out. After you, Sam, Creel, Izzy, Bobbi… At some point, it felt like we were going to just keep finding heroes. Now all we’re finding is-”

“Assholes,” Sam said. “Sorry to tell you, Cap, but most people are.”

“Most people don’t have governments pulling for them to join us,” Steve shook his head. “I’m not feeling confident about this one for next week. A bunch of musicians?”

“K-Pop stars,” Bucky pointed out. “Get with the modern-day, grandpa.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. I can’t see people who became superheroes to sell albums joining the Avengers.”

“I can,” I said pointedly. Steve stared at me, surprised. “Luna Snow, right? Real name Seol Hee?”

“Yeah,” Steve, one of the few people who knew of my dimensional knowledge, if not the comic book part, crossed his arms. “You think I should give her a shot?”

“I think you should give everyone a shot, but Luna,” I thought of another world. Of an ice using K-Pop singer who was really a superhero to the core. Even before the powers. “She’s something to look out for.”

“...I’ll keep that in mind,” Steve said thoughtfully.

“And hey… can you get me her autograph?” I asked. “Same with her teammates. I need to add it to my collection.”

“You gigantic nerd,” Sam said immediately.

“Proud of it,” I grinned while the bumps on my face shifted.

In the background, the song Sorairo Days by Shoko Nakagawa started to play.

“Love Gurren Lagann,” Steve said idly as the familiar song played, before taking a sip of his drink.

The rest of us nodded in agreement. Bucky checked his watch. “We better hurry. We have to fly out to meet one of the US Army suggestions soon.”

Steve checked his own watch, and returned to eating his food. I joined in. I had another training session with Ares after all. Needed all the energy I could get.

------

May 24, 2014

“Damnit Tony!” I busted into Tony’s lab, fury on my pimply features. “Are you serious!?”

Pepper jumped with a squeal when I entered, Fitz staring at me in surprise. Tony, on the other hand, looked very very innocent as I glared at him.

“Hey, Fanboy. Having a bad day?”

Just before he could say anything else, the screens around us flickered before showing images. Of me, red face and pimples, squinting at the camera.

“That’s been happening all over the Tower,” I said with a glare.

Pepper snapped her head around to glare at Tony. Fitz winced. Tony gasped.

“That’s horrible! What terrible person could have-”

“Nat said she didn’t do it and that you would blame her immediately.”

“Damnit, you caught me.”

“Tony!” Pepper yelled.

“What, it’s a joke!” Tony chuckled. “A damn funny one. You know how long it took me to write a program that would do that?”

“There was a school tour downstairs, Tony,” I said, haunted. “Children cried.”

“...You’re kind of proving my point.”

“How did you do that?” Fitz asked, curious. “A program that would change tower screens near him to show that image?”

“And delete itself from any system it enters,” Tony pointed out. “It’s badass. Gotta keep it away from the political types though.”

“It’s still insanely annoying… And I will have my vengeance,” I whispered slowly, raising the Omnitrix.

“Uh,” Tony stared at me, then looked at Pepper. “Babe?”

“Don’t even try,” Pepper glared at him. “You deserve whatever happens next.”

Tony looked at Fitz next. The Scottish scientist gulped. “Uh, you told me once to never get between a man and a prank.”

“For every case except me!” Tony sighed. “This is why no one likes you, Lover Boy.”

“People like me!” Fitz sputtered.

Tony didn’t have time to say anything before I transformed into Swampfire.

I’d finally grown the collar that was part of my blossomed form. My fingers looked more like claws now, with my knuckles covered in tough thorns. There were red lines in a few cracks along my chest, mimicking a human abdomen, and my eyes had become a deep red. Some long red thorns also poked out of my arms.

“I-”

I blasted Tony in the face with a puff of gas. He passed out in seconds, falling on the floor.

“I’m going to tie him up and hang him with my vines in the lobby,” I said, looking at Pepper and Fitz. “Then I’m going on patrol.”

“Really?” Pepper asked. When I nodded, she smiled, eyes glittering. “I’ll get the rescue armor and come with you!”

I grabbed Tony and placed him on my shoulder. He mumbled something in his sleep, Fitz blinking. “Is he… doing equations in his sleep?”

Pepper and I froze, listening. Tony was just barely audible before petering out again.

“Holy- yeah, he is… There’s a reason he’s called the smartest man alive,” I shook my head and walked off with Pepper, Tony spitting out something that sounded like tensile strength equations.

“I uh, suppose I’ll keep working then,” Fitz said weakly. I looked over my shoulder to see him working on blueprints.

When I got back, I’d have to help. The Defiant wasn’t going to finish itself.

------

May 24, 2014

“I hope I don’t look like you when I have to deal with puberty,” Ruby said as Shuri and I worked.

“You’ll look worse, half-pint.”

She flipped me off. I grabbed a pencil and threw it at her like Nat taught me, Ruby snatching it out of the air. She twirled it around while eyeing Shuri and me.

The three of us were in the facility Tony had set aside for research and development. He’d started calling it the NerdHub, which was total Tony if you asked me. We were in what was essentially the garage, Shuri currently integrating a new program in one of the Defiant’s future engines to try and improve it’s energy efficiency.

What was I doing? Well. I was using the burgeoning skills I was learning from Tony to very helpfully work on a car engine.

Yeah, turns out Tony is of the belief that working on cars and working on space age technology have a lot of the same skill sets.

So I was covered up to my elbows in grease while working on Tony’s 1932 Ford Flathead Roadster, trying to clear it out.

“Is that really the most productive thing you could be doing?” Shuri asked me.

“We aren’t all child prodigies,” I said while waving a hand to bring up a hologram.

“Two of us are,” Ruby said, trading a high five with Shuri.

I ignored them to continue speaking while squinting at the hologram. “I’m learning this whole engineering thing from scratch, so this is how I do it. Kinda fun, honestly.”

“You should work on something new,” Shuri said, her kimoyo beads projecting a hologram of the engine she was looking at. “What is the use of learning old technology?”

“...Shuri, one day, when you end up in a museum with nothing but ancient tech to depend on, you’re going to look back on this moment and curse while putting all the old shit you can together to survive.”

“...What is he talking about?” Shuri asked Ruby, who shrugged.

“Just trust me. New tech is great, but you should never look down on the benefits of the old school,” I looked over at her. “There’s a reason I made sure the Defiant is going to have some regular guns in it. No EMP’s mess with the concept of gunpowder igniting and sending a piece of metal forward very fast after all.”

“The Defiant will be hardened against such things,” Shuri said while rolling her eyes.

“You’ll learn. Oh you’ll learn,” I chuckled. “Complex is cool. But simple works, and that’s always what you want most.”

“He’s so old,” Ruby whispered to Shuri.

“I’m 28,” I grumbled while going back to the car engine. As I did, I winced at the feel of the big ass bumps on my face still bouncing around.

“Does he just never clean his face?” Shuri whispered back.

I sighed while Ruby explained the Swampfire blossoming situation.

God, when was this pimply hell going to end!?

------

May 25, 2014

Four days. That’s how long it took for my pimples to clear and for Swampfire to finally finish blooming. What the hell, Omnitrix?

Plus side, the news seemed to think my new pimples made me ‘relatable’. I’d also gotten free skin care products sent out to me on one day shipping from various companies, and one elderly woman who sent a box of onions and a home recipe her mother had taught her for cleaning pores.

I kept the onions to cook with, and had X take care of her bills for being such a sweetheart.

Combined with my breakfast with Sam, Steve, and Bucky, hanging Tony from the ceiling for an hour, and working on car engines, I kept busy.

Taking lessons with Tony on tech stuff over the weekend, law with Jen on Monday, piloting Quinjets with Clint on Tuesday, off to train with Ares everyday at 2 PM. Then a few hours patrol around New York City, always in Swampfire form since I was stuck with him, doing it with every Avenger on both teams.

Finally though, it was done. My face was once again smooth. Thank god, because I couldn’t stand one more joke from Tony, Jen, and Nat.

Pizza Face, Crater Maw, Moonman, the Pink Avenger, Pus in Boots, and much much more. Combined with Tony making sure images of my face would appear once a day all across the Avengers Tower computers, I knew I’d need to get my revenge soon. Jury Rigg was going to have his day...

For now though, I was just glad to be back to my relatively okay looking self, rather than the rejected version of the Toxic Avenger. And that I was no longer locked into Swampfire form.

“Was it really that bad?” Sam asked me when I mentioned it to him.

The two of us were in a car driving through New York City, Sam driving while I hung out in the back seat with our fellow passenger/leader. The three of us were on a mission of protection, technically. Personally I thought the person we were protecting could handle herself, but the last time someone thought that, Nick Fury had ended up faking his death.

“Well, the pimple thing was mostly annoying,” I admitted. “But being stuck with one alien to fight with could have been bad if something popped up that Swampfire couldn’t handle and none of you guys were around to help me out.”

“That’s not something you should worry about,” Maria Hill looked up from a paper file in her hand to give me a critical look. “I’ve been making sure none of our people goes out alone again. Not on missions at least. The only reason I don’t complain whenever you decide to disappear is that you tend to take a friend along.”

“Complain?” I blinked at her.

“Yeah… Mahmoud,” Sam looked in the mirror at me while we stopped at a light. “You need to keep everyone informed about where you go.”

I balked at that idea immediately. “I’m sorry, should I make sure to come home by nine and call you if I want to stay at Timmy’s house.”

Sam didn’t flinch at my caustic tone. “It’s not like that. We have a lot of enemies out there that want to get their hands on you. If you go out alone and just disappear because the right person found the right way to capture or kill you…” Sam let out a deep sigh. “Well, we still haven’t found Trip and Sharon, man. I don’t want to wake up one day and find another friend gone. It scared me enough when I found out about the Savage Land. I don’t want that to happen again.”

I stared at him. When I looked at Maria, she was very carefully reading her file.

“Yeah. Yeah, all right,” I said at last, trying to sound sincere. I wasn’t lying. I just knew that sometimes I might have to disappear without notice… I’d let X know. If I ever had to go somewhere crazy with no notice.

“For now, are you sure they’ll be there,” I asked Maria.

“They’ve been there for the past day or so, after they left Pop’s Shop,” Maria said with a sigh. “They’re actually very good at counter-espionage tactics.”

“Well, one is a private investigator and the other is a former Marine and cop,” I pointed out.

“Doesn’t account for them almost disappearing from under our eyes. We were lucky that we already had some idea of where they would go.”

We came to a stop in front of a fancy looking apartment building, one of those big red brick ones that took up a block of the city. Sam parked, and the three of us exited the car. I could see that this place wasn’t just fancy. It was also kind of a fortress. There were security guards for one. Not normal guys who worked a nine-to-five, but guys with real military training, carrying their pistols on their hips in just the right way to easily clear it from their holsters, their muscles firm under their uniforms.

Sam and I walked up. Sam was wearing his wingsuit, the black and red almost glimmering in the light, his helmet down to reveal one of the most famous faces in the world. I was wearing my more casual style costume, but the Omnitrix was glowing on my wrist. Maria walked ahead of us with confidence. “Dial. You know the apartment. Go Big Chill, fly up there, and knock on their door. Sam, you’re with me.”

“On it, boss,” I pushed down on the Omnitrix as we entered the doors. In a flash of green, the air got a little colder.

“Big Chill!”

I unfurled my wings. The security guards had already been informed by the building manager that we were coming, but they still flinched at the sight of a mothman appearing in a flash of light. I beat my wings once, turning translucent, then flew upwards like a rocket. I passed through the floor to enter a hallway, then flew up to the next hallway, then the next. Once I got to the right floor, I landed on the carpet and brought my wings to curl around me until I was hooded. A maid stared at me.

“Just here for a meeting,” I told her.

Ignoring her as she made the sign of the cross at my passing, I made my way down the hall. Counting the numbers as I passed, I finally reached the right door, my green insectoid eyes narrowing. On a whim, I briefly pressed a long finger on the door. When I phased it, my finger had to go through several inches of solid steel before I felt the air on the other side.

“Well, if they had to pick a good place to hide,” I mused to myself.

Removing my finger, I knocked on the door. Crossing my hands behind my back, I waited. I heard someone walk up to the door. I could imagine them looking out, seeing my buggy face, then panicking. Someone hissed something at a barely audible volume.

“Hey! Hi!” I called through the door. “I’m not here to fight, I’m here to talk! My name is Dial… Uh, you know, I can just walk through this door.”

Someone, a female voice, let out a loud, ‘Oh fuck me sideways!’ through the door. I heard the elevators behind me open and close, and glanced behind me to see Maria and Sam walk out. As they did, the door to the apartment opened.

A woman poked her head out. She was pretty, blonde hair done up in a ponytail, a slightly upturned nose, and green eyes. I stared at her for a moment, trying to imagine the potential superhero this woman could become.

“Trish Walker?” I asked her. “I’m here to talk to Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.”

“They um,” Trish stared at me, then looked behind her. Someone cursed once again, loud and angry. She stepped back as someone else snapped the door open.

A thin white woman with long black hair, a pretty face, and the pissed off grimace of a professional asshole, eyed me up and down. “Shouldn’t you be fucking a lamp somewhere?”

“I only fuck on the third date. Nice to meet you, Jessica Jones.”

“First time anyone has said that,” Jessica snarked.

Behind her, came Luke Cage. He was as big as Creel, sculpted with muscle the same way most of my male friends were. He had a small goatee, and deep intense eyes, his skin a dark chocolate brown. He gave me a smile.

“Forgive her. Jessica’s the uh…”

“Bitchy,” Jessica said without a hint of shame.

“Abrasive sort,” Luke said with a grin.

“Honestly, it’s not that bad.”

“Hey, is your face still fucked up with zits?”

Trish and Luke winced. Jessica smirked. I smiled.

“No. No, it isn’t.”

Maria and Sam joined us. “Jessica Jones, Luke Cage. I’m Maria Hill, Director of BRIDGE. I think we should have a talk.”

They shared a long look. Luke nodded. Jessica cursed, again, before looking at Trish.

The blonde raised her hands with some nervousness on her face. “Hey, this is… WAY, above my paygrade.”

“Hey, weren’t you Patsy Walker?” Sam asked, surprised. “I loved that show when I was a kid.”

Trish hesitantly smiled at that.