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Seated in a comfortable armchair, Stephen concentrated on his new (well, ancient, though new to him), book of spells concerning water. Around him the Avengers were sprawled out over the various pieces of furniture and talking about the upcoming holiday. Halloween. Personally Stephen was dreading it. According to Wong it was going to be one of his busiest days with the veil between the worlds being weak and the tendency of morons to attempt summoning spells that day. He was not looking forward to the magical exhaustion he had come to hate. But he perked up when Tony’s voice rose above the others.
“Well, you guys might not like Halloween but I used to love it. The excitement! The terror! The adrenaline running through your veins! It was great. Unfortunately, now there is not much that can scare me. So this year I’m holding a contest. Anyone who can scare me that day wins.”
“What do they win Mr. Stark?” Peter asked from where he hung from the ceiling.
“I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet. It’d probably depend on the person who won. So I guess I’ll make it so the winner gets one favor from me but I can refuse whatever it is if I feel like it.”
“That sounds great Mr. Stark so I could ask you to let me be an Avenger!?”
“Answer is still no kiddo.”
“Aw man.” The others laughed at his disappointment and peppered Tony with questions. Stephen took careful note while pretended to still be engrossed in his book. The contest would be the weekend before Halloween and run all day long. Anyone who scared him between 12:01 am and 11:59pm would win. Stephen had to make sure he won. He got up suddenly and left, oblivious to Peter asking him, “Where you going Mr. Strange?” He had a spell to find. And only three weeks to find it.
It took a week but he found the perfect spell. It took another week for him to get comfortable with the spell. He hadn’t had much practice in the way of shape shifting but it was just the one shape he had to get comfortable in and he certainly was now. The Sanctum was very happy with him despite the occasional accidentally damage done with his new appendages. It merely fixed itself and encouraged his efforts. To be honest, he felt like the Sanctum wanted him to be happy.
One week left until the contest.
He went to the Compound. He found an empty room and quietly spoke.
“FRIDAY?”
“Yes, Dr. Strange.”
“Are you able to keep a secret from Tony?”
“I will not withhold knowledge that would risk his life or that of his teammates.”
“No, no. I just…I was hoping you might help me concerning Tony’s Halloween contest.”
“You, Doctor?”
“Yes, me. I have a plan but I need your help.”
“What would you need from me?”
“I would need to cut the lights, maybe act like you had been turned off, and perhaps flicker the lights at strategic moments.”
“And what will you be doing Doctor?” He opened his mouth to answer but got up to lock the door first. “Can you not show him the next few minutes of footage?”
“I will determine that afterwards.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded to himself and promptly shifted into the form he had practiced.
“Mr. Stark will not see this footage and I would be happy to help you in your attempts to scare Mr. Stark.”
“Excellent, so I was thinking…” The pair spent the next hour going over the blueprints of the Compound and FRIDAY had Stephen take one of the coms so that they would be able to talk the night of the contest. Stephen was all set.
Tony was starting to look forward to the contest. Sure he might have to be ‘on his toes’ the whole day, but, really, he had been so his entire life. He already knew what several of the others were planning and he could not believe that Peter was just going to make a giant spider to throw at him. Really, a man jumps because of a spider once and immediately has arachnophobia. He chuckled to himself as he wandered into the communal living room.
A head popped up as he did, and he waved to the good Doctor.
“Doctor Strange. How are you doing on this fine day?” He said it as suave and debonair as he could but got a deadpan stare in return. God he wished Stephen would show some interest. The man was HOT. Those streaks of white in his hair should be illegal, they added such majesty to the man. And those cheekbones! Tony wanted to cut himself on those. His mind started to drift into very adult avenues.
“-Stark are even listening to me?”
“Of course I am Strange. Who wouldn’t want to listen to you rambling about magic? After all, it’s just science humans don’t understand yet.” He smiled in the face of the Doctor’s glare; only to struggle not to frown when the man closed his book and stood up. “Where you off to Strange?” He didn’t receive a direct answer. Just a gesture to the ceiling before the man was gone, a few wisps of purple smoke showing he had been there. “FRIDAY?”
“Yes boss?”
“What did Stephen have to say when I wasn’t listening?”
“Doctor Strange is leaving for a different dimension to attend a convergence of the temples and will be gone for several days. He expressed a disappointment that he might not be able to participate in your contest.”
The night before his contest Tony called Wong to see if Stephen had gotten back to this dimension yet. He went to sleep with the disappointing knowledge that he was still gone and probably wouldn’t make it back before tomorrow.
The day started off with Tony waking up to a horse head in his bed. His experience informed him immediately that the blood was fake and a quick poke told him the head was plastic.
“FRIDAY, get someone in here to clean this up.” In the bathroom he stood beside the tub as he turned on the shower, idly watching the thick black water swirling down the drain. He waited ten minutes but the water stayed black so he dressed in sweats and left. In the hallway he called for FRIDAY to bring the lights up to one hundred. Revealing the blood that dripped from the wall before him. TODAY YOU DIE STARK
He looked closer and tapped the sticky substance with a finger, impressed that it was real blood. But definitely not enough to be severe blood loss in an individual. In the elevator, he idly watched the clock of the bomb it held tick down.
He reached his intended floor as the clock reached :04 and as the doors closed behind him chuckled at the muffled whuumf behind him. They were going all out today. A real bomb and everything.
“FRIDAY, was that explosion contained?”
“Yes, boss. The elevator shows no damage to the systems.”
“Good, then just make sure that mess gets cleaned up.”
“Of course boss.” He walked towards the men’s locker room, stepping carefully around the multitudes of tarantula that nearly covered the hallway floor. He would hate to hurt what was probably one of Peter’s new friends. At the locker-room, the door was jammed, muffled screams becoming audible as he put his shoulder to it and saw smoke coming from the gap underneath. He sighed and brought up a repulser, taking the door right off its hinges and revealing a smoke machine on the floor and a cassette player.
“A cassette player? Are they kidding me with this? Where do you even get one of these any more?” At the shower he was met with a brief burst of red before the water ran clean and he showered quickly. He grabbed a fluffy towel from the shelf only to drop it when it squealed. It shuffled off. He looked at the other identical towels left and poked one tentatively. Nothing. He grabbed it. It squealed. He left them on the shelf, using the t-shirt he had worn on the way down as a towel and leaving him with just the sweats.
He went back up to his room. The elevator was lacking a bomb this time and the wall looking like the blood had been burned off. This was going to be a very messy day. He dressed in several layers, hoping to just be able to slowly lose them to whatever gross thing he was exposed to next.
He went down to the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway. Rhodey lay limply on the island. Or rather his upper body lay on the island, he legs lay on the floor beside it and Natasha was dicing up his organs to throw in the large stew pot she had on the stove.
“Good morning Tony!”
“Tones…help me… I’d help you. I’d do anything for you...” Rhodey’s voice was weak from where he lay in a pool of his own blood. He walked into the room, heart already calming and leaned over his lifelong friend.
“Then perish.” He grinned in the face of Rhodey’s absolute shock. “Went too overboard, Playtpus. Way too much blood loss to be conscious let alone alive.”
“Dammit.” Tony looked over at Natasha who slammed the large knife into the counter.
“Hey, don’t damage my stuff. So who did this for you, huh? Maximoff? Strange? Wong?”
“Wong helped us with it.” Tony nodded in respect to their non-present benefactor.
“Does good work. You guys went too far with it though. You were close though. Nearly had me.”
“Really? We didn’t get you?
“FRIDAY, did Tony’s heart spike.” Tony looked at what Natasha had made and decided to get a bagel instead. Smiling to himself as FRIDAY answered Rhodey’s question.
“There was a small increase in heart rate but did not indicate extreme shock, Colonel Rhodes.” He left the kitchen to go the bakery just down the street, hearing the pair cursing and Rhodey telling Nat to call Wong so he could get up.
He spend a calm half hour at the bakery. Watching the city go by. He had wanted to give the pair some time to clean up before he went back. The rest of the day was one thing after another.
An old man came in at one point in the afternoon and explained that he was Steve Rogers. And it truly looked like he was! “Help me,” he said. “The serum must have worn off or something, you have to help me please.”
“Leave your name and number with my receptionist and I will get back to you.” was Tony’s only response.
Throughout the day the lights started flickering as the others ran about in various masks and jumped out at him.
He yawned.
At one point, Clint walked by dragging a body bag and leaving a large smear of blood on the ground.
“You better clean that up.”
Strange apparently was able to make it and walked into the Compound without a head, running into everyone and everything as the blood dripped from the jagged stump of his neck.
“Okay, I gotta say that is pretty impressive. Would have worked if I hadn’t seen Wong’s work earlier.”
Strange didn’t answer, as if he couldn’t hear Tony, with no head he probably couldn’t.
Night fell and he set himself up on the couch in the living room. Ready for whatever they could throw at him. The others kept putting in various horror films in an attempt to make him a little easier to scare, but they had apparently begun to run out of idea when Jurassic Park came on not long before midnight. All other lights had been turned off by this point, leaving only the glow of the TV to light the room.
“Really guys?” He looked around to see that he was in fact the only one left in the room. “FRIDAY let me know if anyone comes in.”
“Yes boss.” On screen Ellie and Grant were leaving the kids at the buffet to get to work on the controls, trying to get the park back up. The jello shook with the girl’s shock and they tried to hide from the velociraptor. This was actually a great movie, he had forgotten how good the effects had been for the time. The velociraptor stood tall in the doorway and called; the sound echoed oddly in the living room. The hell? He called for full light and looked for the remote to mute the movie. On screen the raptor walked through the kitchen and Tony could still hear every step. But the sound was not coming from the TV in front of him.
He felt his pulse begin to race.
And slowly turned around.
Behind the couch was a velociraptor.
He locked eyes with the extinct predator and took in the emotionless eyes and the blood that dripped from its snout. He slowly raised one hand keeping the movement out of its sight and freezing as it turned its head to fix a single eye upon his face in a calculating stare.
He raised his hand at the same time it turned to face him and released a screech that had death’s fingers on his spine.
The blast threw the raptor back from him and he raced to figure out a way to escape.
“FRIDAY! Initiate lockdown!”
The lights flickered to red emergency lights, but there was no reply from FRIDAY. He skidded into the attached kitchen and wrenched open the knife drawer. He tapped his chest and realized that the armor was not there. Fuck. In the other room he heard the raptor moving about, calling again. He prayed there weren’t any more in the building, he had seen the thing collide with the wall and the dent it had made. This was no hologram.
God, did Maximoff do this? Naw. Who on earth could get or make a velociraptor? The Fantastic Four? Wong? Stephen? His thoughts cut off as he heard claws on the wood floor of the kitchen.
Step,
tap tap.
step,
tap tap.
The sound stopped.
There was nothing but his breathing.
He leaned over, barely a breath of movement and looked around the island.
The kitchen was empty.
His chest heaved in renewed terror.
WHERE THE FUCK DID IT GO!?!
He turned back.
It was there before him breath suddenly heavy and rank upon his face.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!”
The raptor screeched in his face in response, but didn’t move.
He stopped screaming.
The raptor slowly leaned forward.
Its entire body oh so slowly tilting.
To rest its forehead on his.
“I win.”
“W-w-what?” He could hardly hear over his pounding heart as the raptor moved away and the lights suddenly came on.
Illuminating the lithe raptor now standing calming a step or two away.
“I said, I win.”
The raptor’s voice was one he knew he should recognize.
It took him several long moments, as the ice in his veins began to thaw, to figure it out.
“I hate you, Strange.”