Chapter Text
Jean, Storm, Logan, Mystique and Magneto were planning their attack on the base when Jean suddenly said "I don't think any of that will be necessary." A moment later everyone aboard the Blackbird heard the Professor's voice in their head. Jean told the others "Strap in, we need to move closer to their exit." Without hesitation, they all did and were flown around to a side entrance.
As they landed, a figure cloaked in darkness ran outside with the Professor, Cyclops and the kids while another stranger ran alongside them a little unsteadily. They all boarded the jet and the first figure set a boy in a hospital gown down in one of the seats before the shadows left him. "Uncle E!" He cheered at Magneto "You're coming with us, right? It's not like we're gonna risk a repeat of this by turning you over to the humans again. You can leave in DC but first let's show the President a united front. Okay?"
After a few minutes, during which Magneto looked at the Professor, the militant mutant leader nodded and sat down on a bench. Kitty was the first one to recognize the strange shadow man "You're Tony Stark!" Her exclamation accompanied them all taking seats for take off.
"Yes and no. I am not genetically Howard Stark's son, nor am I Magneto's nephew but mom was a Stark when she had me so I guess I'm still entitled to the name. Call me Nyx or Tony, I guess. And you are?"
"Kitty Pryde, uh Shadowcat."
"What's your power?"
"I can walk through walls."
"Then you should go by something like Ghost, shorter is better when someone needs to shout a warning without revealing your real name."
"I'll think about it."
Tony nodded then turned to her friends, "And you are?"
"Bobby Drake, Iceman."
"Name's fine as long as you don't mind being called Ice. And?"
"Rogue, just Rogue."
"John, Pyro."
"Family troubles, I get it. If not for the sheer amount of backlash, I'd proudly proclaim that I am not Howard Stark's son or that I am a mutant but I gotta think about other people. With anti-mutant prejudice still rampant, if I went out tomorrow and told the world I am a mutant then a few things would happen, none of them good. Stark Industries stock would plummet, which would give the Board of Directors a reason to order massive layoffs and force me out of the company in a semi-hostile takeover, erasing all the little things I've done to get rid of workplace discrimination. It wouldn't surprise me if they shut down the Maria Stark Foundation and any other philanthropic endeavors to save money for themselves. Can't do that and believe it or not, revealing mom had an affair would make things even worse than revealing I have an X-gene so that's a no-go." Tony smiled sadly at John after delivering his lesson to all three, "I got shadow powers for a reason, kid, saved my life when all I could do was hide in a corner."
"Howard Stark-"
Tony flashed back to his drunk father yelling for him, telling him to stop being a coward and take his punishment like a man (punishment for what, Tony would never know). He stalked right past his son, who curled up smaller, unaware of the shadows wrapping around him. His wife tried grabbing his arm to get his attention, to soothe his anger but she grabbed the wrong one, the one with the bottle and Howard's arm jerked, knocking her back. Edwin Jarvis tried to tell his employer that was quite enough, tried to make him see that he had just hit his wife but he was too far gone and it only escalated. Howard never hit Tony but it was sometimes a near thing and when he came to his senses, well he didn't remember any of it but he didn't deny it either. Tony breathed through the memory, a recently mind-control free Scott talking him through it. "You okay?"
"Not really, I just friggin' triggered myself."
Kitty asked "Was it really that bad?"
"He never really hit me, mostly because when he wanted to, he couldn't find me but he did hit mom a few times on accident, she grabbed his arm in her attempt to calm him down and his arm jerked because it was the one holding the bottle. I couldn't move, I was usually the one he was pissed at and if he could do that on accident, I didn't want to see what would happen when he acted with intent. Worst part is, he'd get so drunk that he never remembered any of it. Still, could be worse, I guess, at least he had to get drunk to lose all sense. A lot of DV cases involve people who are stone sober and he usually locked himself away after hearing about it, tried to detox a few times." Tony turned to the Professor "There was no alcohol in the house the night he died. Mom made him get rid of it while I was at MIT, she threatened to leave him and tell the world how he'd treated her, Jarvis wouldn't sneak him a bottle because he supported mom. He couldn't have been drunk driving, he had nothing to drink and mom wouldn't get in a car with him if he was drunk because he was prone to blow up at the slightest provocation. I still have no idea what I did that made him want to kill me when he was drunk, he didn't know when he started to sober up. If he wasn't drunk driving but he was behind the wheel then that means something else caused the crash. I don't care much for Howard Stark, even though I have to call him my father, but I do care about mom and she died too so I gotta figure out what really happened. Any ideas?"
"There were witnesses, son."
"Obie, probably part of his plan to steal the company, and a few others, I'll look into it."
Pyro looked between them "Is the Professor actually your father?"
"Genetically, yes but I didn't meet him until I was an adult so genetics is where the father-son relationship starts and basically where it ends." Tony looked down at his chest and made the darkness vanish, revealing a band shirt and no glow. "My powers don't tire me out the way other powers might, darkness and shadows are natural things, I manipulate them, I don't generate them so there's not much loss of energy on my side." He looked at the teens "You understand?"
"Yeah," Pyro said, flicking his lighter "Like me and fire, I can manipulate the flame all day long. My power only starts tiring me out when I try to make more, make it grow." He demonstrated by making a dragon out of the small flame, making it grow until it was the size of his head then he closed his hand and snuffed the flame "It's like that, right?"
"Yeah. I didn't always know I was using my power or that I even had one, I just thought I found a good hiding place." Tony continued "I can black out an entire room, or even a whole base, but unless I have pre-existing shadows to draw on, darkness that's already there, doing that is exhausting because I'm forced to draw on small bits of shadow, like my own, and come up with the rest on my own. It's possible, exhausting but possible." The billionaire mutant smiled "I wouldn't have it any other way because people who have to generate their element are limited by how much they can generate. Imagine if Magneto over there could only move metal he organically created and that metal only lasted as long as he willed it to, he wouldn't be able to do jack because of the strain. Manipulating an element in its natural state is much better than generating it and manipulating that. Don't you think?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Great." Tony looked at Cyclops then his father "Is he alright?"
"He will be, son, in time."
"I meant, did you clear his mind of Stryker's sick drug?"
"Yes."
Tony turned to Magneto "Stryker used his own son's cranial fluid to control mutants, including the kid himself, and knowing you, that would be enough of an excuse to kill both of them because you're only self-aware to a point. The kid didn't ask to have a crazy father experiment and operate on him, kid had no more control over what happened then you did when you told him about the school."
"I am aware."
"Just keep that in mind for the next time a mutant kid is used against mutant kind because I can't see Stryker being either the first or the last." Magneto nodded and Tony turned back to his father "Figure out who Lady Deathstrike is?"
"Yuriko Oyama and that is all I can tell you, son."
"Alright."
The inventor relaxed into his seat a moment before Wolverine started passing out uniforms to the teens. Jean switched places with Scott once his mind was clear enough to fly, checking on the young Stryker, "Jason? Can you hear me?" He was unresponsive and with a heavy heart, Charles used Stryker's name for his son, garnering a response from both the boy and Magneto.
Tony sighed "Stryker called him that, said his son was dead along with the rest of us. I think he planned to make that a prophecy." He shrugged "Sorry, I got lost in the base, didn't get to Stryker in time."
"Your intervention was still timely, although I have to wonder how you got in the base."
"Oh, uh, I hid on the jet that flew away from the school. I was going to check on you but the school was under attack, I saw them dumping kids in the jet and made a judgement call, figuring that if push comes to shove, they'd cut their losses and pull out. I was right."
Scott said "Thanks for that."
"We were lucky. Yuriko couldn't see me well enough to attack me while I took apart the device Stryker was using to contain the Prof's power then Stryker had the world's most powerful telepath working against him and that's never a fair fight." Scott actually chuckled at that. Tony turned to Logan, "I don't need a suit, I can cloak myself in shadows and say nothing."
Rogue asked "Do you mind if I ask about Afghanistan?"
"Not as long as Charles doesn't mind running interference on my triggers."
"Why didn't you use your powers then?"
"Oh, that's not even a trigger. I have the power to control shadows, I do not have the power to survive a dozen men randomly firing machine guns at me. And, of course, there's also that thing where I don't want to be outed as a mutant because my company could be ruined if even whispers of that got out and I won't betray the people who rely on me for their livelihood but that didn't occur to me until later."
"Right."
Tony asked "What is your power? Iceman and Pyro are pretty self-explanatory and Kitty told me hers."
"When I touch people, I absorb their life-force."
"Sounds awful. Let me guess, you can't turn it off."
"No."
"Alright. I'll take some time to come by the school next week, see how I can help the student body. To be clear, you can only absorb life-force through direct contact, right?"
"Right."
"A field of harmless energy should be enough of a barrier for you to safely touch people, can't say you won't feel it but you and the people around you should be safe. I also can't promise I'll get it right on the first try, we're talking about force-field tech, that's new territory."
"Thank you." Tony shot his father a look before smiling at Rogue with a nod.
Tony and Storm's powers came in handy, as did Charles' to freeze the room. They dumped a file from Alkali Lake on the President's desk, Charles politely warned the world leader not to start a war that nobody can win and they vanished. Yuriko went with Magneto and Mystique while Tony stayed with the X-Men. Before he left the school, he gave Scott his card to open two way communication in case the X-Men needed the Avengers or vice versa.