Prompt#309 –Under the Table- Room for Improvement - Tekia – The Avengers/Exalted

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Title: Room for Improvement
Fandom: The Avengers/Exalted
Prompt: Under the Table
Warnings: fighting and zombies
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When facing an enemy that may be just too much for you, you find the weakest link and exploit it. When you are that weakest link, maybe there may be room for improvement, or maybe you find you were falling for the trap all along.

It was a trap. He knew it had to be. There was just too much about the whole situation that screamed trap.
Not that he had listened when the others had tried to warn him of his own stupidity. His anger and fear and depression had been too much for him to hear anything beyond his own doubts and the harsh whisper of his father’s hurtful words.
So now he stood in the middle of an ancient temple, way out of his depth, and calling himself ten kinds of fool.
The bastard had played him.
Which, now that he thought about it, he really should have seen it coming.
Rubbing a hand over his face, Tony Stark look a longer look around the room in which he found himself. There was a glow of light from the sun filtering through the water above the glass windows that lit up the room, but left most of it in blue shadows. He guessed the walls would be white in natural light, and they were works of art, murals scrolling in a dance of light and shadow, what he guessed to be writing etched with delicate strokes that looked like more art.
He stepped closer to one wall and pressed his bare hand against the cool stone. There was a soft hum and vibration coming from the wall that flowed into the air and into him. It was calming and soothing and felt like heaven. There was a brief thought of putting the helmet back on and seeing if JARVIS could read anything into it, but the thought of putting on the helmet and cutting off his exposer to the peaceful atmosphere was near painful.
He stepped forward, following the slow arc of the hall, never letting his hand drop from the wall. If he closed his eyes, he thought perhaps he could feel something like love and comfort embracing him, smoothing away his fears and doubts and making him wish that he could just be here, forever.
With a lurch, he dropped his hand from the wall and stepped away. This was why he thought it had to be a trap. In this world, there was no love for him. Those that had claimed to love him at one point in time had all left him, from his own parents, to Pepper.
True, he drove Pepper away with his doubts and fears, and he still believed that she was better off not with him, but she did leave. There was no way a building could love him.
Breathing deeply, he moved on, still with his helmet off. Not touching the wall had been a monumental effort, and putting the helmet on was still too much. The air was cool and there was something sweet filling it.
He paused just outside an alcove, the thin, sheer curtain fluttering in the source less breeze. He pushed it aside, ignoring how the temple seemed to be alive, watching him in a way that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It was strange, JARVIS never made him feel watched, and JARVIS had a voice.
This temple, outside the gentle hum of energy, was as silent as a tomb.
A heavy crash echoed suddenly from behind him. Tony jerked his hand away from the curtain and spun on his heel to face back the way he had come. The breeze made the curtain rise up and curl around his legs. His helmet was on before he consciously thought about it, but he needn’t have worried.
Cap and Thor came into view, and Tony felt his body loose the tension that had seeped into his shoulders.
“What are you doing here?”
Cap frowned behind his cowl and approached. “We could ask the same of you. Why didn’t you wait for us?”
Tony shook his head. How could he tell them what that man had said? How could he admit that he still felt like a lost child inside, crying for attention? “Why did you follow me?”
“Iron Man, we are a team, we work together.” He reached out and rested a heavy hand on Tony’s shoulder. “You’re not alone in this.”
Tony felt a curl of heat in his chest as Thor came to stand beside them. “Indeed. We shall do this together.”
Tony nodded once and turned back toward the alcove. “It’s in here. I can feel it.”
Cap stared at the curtain flowing in the breeze. “What is it? Have you figured it out yet?”
“From his clues, I’m guessing it’s a weapon. He said if we want to defeat him, we have to get what is hidden away in here.” He pushed the curtain aside and stepped through the doorway, Thor and Cap on his heels.
The alcove turned out to be another hall, this one with a gentle slope down. The walls were just as luminous as the as those in the hall, even without the glow from the water.
The mad man who called himself The Hour at Hand had boasted that not one person on Earth could defeat him. The Avengers had their hands full trying to stay one step ahead of him, difficult as it was. The man was quite insane, and none of his tricks or plots made a lick of sense. Just when Tony thought he had the man figured out he would do something so odd that Tony just threw his charts away and drunk himself under the table for even trying to understand.
The man, no, the creature, had no plans to rule the world like other villains, nor did he appear to want to destroy the world, even if he did leave an awful lot of destruction in his wake. He killed without quam, and nothing was sacred to him. Trying to figure him out was like trying to find a pattern in the stars. You knew others could see it, but for the life of you, you just can’t see it from where you are.
Maybe it took a bit of imagination.
“This is a holy place,” Thor said from behind him, making Tony jump in surprise. His voice was low, near a whisper, and that just added a whole new level of strange to this whole endeavor.
“It’s a temple. There was an offering plate just outside the door.”
“What is a temple doing at the bottom of the ocean?”
“What were you doing in the middle of a glacier?” Tony retorted before he could hold his tongue. He winced. He was supposed to be trying to be nicer, wasn’t he? Something about flies and honey. “It sank at some point. I figure it wasn’t always at the bottom of the ocean.”
Soft footsteps were racing to catching up with them as the rest of the team appeared behind them. “There are booby traps,” Black Widow said, her hair wet and a frown twisting her lips. “We set one off a bit ago, but haven’t seen another yet.”
“Do you think there will be more?” Cap asked.
“Undoubtedly.” She moved around Tony to take point.
The walk down was done in a tense silence as they all kept an eye out for trap triggers. Then, the hall ended and opened into a large opening made to look like the curve of a wave. The room itself was massive, walls that reached up near twenty feet and graceful arches of marble. They paused in the doorway in awe.
“This room is larger than the temple has room for,” Steve murmured, his voice low in deference to the atmosphere.
“It’s bigger on the inside,” Tony replied absently.
Hawkeye snorted his laughter.
Black Widow rolled her eyes and directed their attention toward the walls. “Is that writing? Iron Man, can you decipher it?”
“It’s no known language. JARVIS is looking into it, but no matches so far.”
“How old is this place?”
“Who knows?” Tony grinned behind the HUD. “Did you see the system built into the door? If this place is half as old as I suspect, then the people who built it were my kind of people.”
“How so?” Cap asked.
“Ahead of their time.” With that, Tony walked into the room. The floor was marble, but unlike any he had seen before; he was beginning to doubt it was even marble. It was a solid blue color, bordering on black. Despite being underwater, the temple’s air and walls were dry. Moisture hadn’t done any damage to the place.
Suddenly Hawkeye was right beside him, pointing. “Are those coffins!?”
Indeed they were. Aligned on one wall, there were six upright glass coffins. One was empty and unused. The others each housed a body so well preserved that they looked to be only sleeping. All of them were dressed in beautifully made clothes and armor. Weapons rested at their sides or in their hands. Tony paused before one, gazing in at the woman resting inside.
Another loud crash echoed through the hall, making Hawkeye curse and Tony jump in his armor. They all turned to glare at him. With a sheepish grin, Hawkeye said, “Oops.” The casket before him had its lid ajar.
The body inside was slumped forward, the man’s short black hair bordering on blue was spiked up and crowned with a diadem of some golden substance. He wore shoulder guards and arm braces, but little else in the way of armor. His clothes were all dark, from dark red trousers to the black tunic over everything.
Suddenly, Iron Man’s HUD came alive with status for the man in the coffin as he began to move. Tony reached out. “Hawkeye, move!”
Hawkeye ducked and rolled away, his bow extending to full length in his hand with a snap of his elbow. The glass lid of the coffin fell forward to the ground and shattered. The man inside the coffin opened his cold blue eyes, and turned their dead stare toward Hawkeye.
“Is that a zombie?” he cried. “Is that really a zombie?” He was grinning, and Tony could feel a similar grin stretching his lips. “Do we get to fight zombies now?”
The zombie lurched out of the coffin, but was graceful as he charged Hawkeye. Hawkeye let loose an arrow, and his smirk died on his lips when the zombie caught the arrow in one hand while swinging a small axe with the other in a wide arc toward his head.
Tony let loose a blast that took the zombie off his feet and threw him into the wall. Before he could crow his victory over Hawkeye, a body crashed into him. He was thrown to the ground and he cursed. A body that could knock his suit off its feet was a strong body indeed.
He tossed the body off him and rolled to his back. The zombie that had attacked Hawkeye was now engaged with Thor, and giving him a run for his money. For each punch Thor dealt out, the zombie retaliated with one just as strong. Cap was faced off with his own zombie, and Black Widow was helping Hawkeye defend Tony against his while he tried to deal with what he was seeing.
The other two bodies were still in their coffins, as still as death. Tony pulled himself to his feet slowly.
Was this the trap that The Hour at Hand had set up for them? Zombies? It didn’t make sense.
Then again, these zombies were terrifically strong. One blocked Cap’s shield with its armored arm, sending the disc flying away from Cap. Thor’s tossed him into Cap and the two men collapsed into a mass of limbs and cape.
“What the hell? Are these zombies on steroids?” Hawkeye had ducked behind Iron Man and shot off an arrow that was just as effective as the last. Which was not at all.
Tony aimed another blast, but the zombie had learned from the last one, which was very weird, and ducked out of the way, under the beam and back up to slam into Tony. With a blue streak of cursing, Tony crashed into one of the unopened coffins. The glass held and he fell to the floor.
The zombie picked up Hawkeye by his quiver and brought his arm back to punch him. Black Widow leaped onto his back, her knives digging into his neck, but the zombie didn’t seem to even notice her. She wrapped her legs around his free arm, waylaying his attack enough that Hawkeye could slip out from the quiver and free.
Behind them, Thor finally brought his hammer into play. The air, so calm before, charged with electricity and surrounding him. The zombie facing him, the smartest zombies Tony had ever heard of, raised his arms in a cross before him, his own arms suddenly charged with electricity. Its white hair was just about as long as Thor’s hair, and his eyes were such a pale blue they appeared to be white as well. All that white was offset by the vibrant red of his clothes. From his slipper-like shoes to the overtunic he wore, the only other color on his person was the white under tunic, the sleeves of which peeked through where the armor parted for ties. The armor was plates sewn together not unlike a samurai’s would have been, and yet it held under the force of Thor’s hammer.
“What the hell,” Tony said to himself as the HUD filled with impossible numbers and stats. With a roar of anger, Thor brought the hammer down and the shockwave sent Black Widow tumbling off her zombie’s shoulders and Hawkeye ducking with his arms over his head. Cap and his zombie barely noticed the explosion behind them as they danced around each other, trading punches.
The white zombie that had been hit with Thor’s hammer was still standing, his arms smoking and scorched. From where he stood, Tony could tell that the arms were broken, but that didn’t seem to bother the zombie at all. His fingers twitched and he kept coming toward Thor.
Tony raised his arm, charged a blast toward the zombie. Before it could go off, JARVIS called a warning, and the first zombie, no longer dealing with Black Widow and Hawkeye, slammed an arm into Tony, knocking his blast off course. Tony was knocked into the sealed coffin once more and he gasped for breath. The impact had dented his armor, curling it around his ribs uncomfortably.
“What are these things?”
“I don’t think we can win this one, guys,” Hawkeye called. Cap ducked under a punch and shot them a glance.
“They’re not human.”
“Do you think?” Tony snarled, struggling to his feet while shooting blasts at the zombie now chasing him around the room. Black Widow followed, trying to keep the zombie’s attention split between the two of them.
“At least the other two haven’t woken up,” Clint said as he stood staring at the coffin Tony’s armor had smashed into twice. The zombies seemed to be ignoring him in favor of Iron Man, Thor, and Cap.
“Don’t jinx us,” Black Widow said, her voice flat in irritation.
“Get down!” Cap called suddenly. The HUD displayed a rise in electricity in the room and Tony lifted away from the center of the room where Thor and his zombie were just in time to miss being hit by a branch of lighting brought down from the ceiling by the zombie. The air was heavy with ozone and Hawkeye’s hair was standing on end as he tried to hide behind the glass coffin.
The other zombies seemed unaffected by the lighting. Which was not fair on so many levels.
After catching her breath from the shock, Black Widow spotted the shield lying close to her feet. She reached for it, and sprinted toward Cap. She skipped up the back of the zombie, straddling his shoulders and tossing Captain America his shield.
The zombie pulled Black Widow from his shoulders, his massive hand holding her securely despite her struggles. He threw her forcefully down, her body making a sickly crunch as it collided with the marble. She didn’t move.
Hawkeye cried out, and then ducked away as the zombie turned on him. Iron Man stepped up and punched at the zombie, but the creature swatted at him. Iron Man took to the air, and breathed a sigh of relief when the zombie proved he couldn’t fly as well. Small blessings.
As he shot quick glances at Cap and Thor, Tony paused. His zombie wasn’t moving from his position in the center of the room. What tricks was he up to?
The zombie was massive. Tall and muscular, with black armor lined in silver. There seemed to be faces in the armor, but when he tried to look directly at them, they were gone. His nails were rimmed in black, and Tony suspected it was dried blood. His hair was black and tied away from his face with a length of what looked like barbed wire. At his hip, unused, was a sword that looked evil in its own right. Tony feared that, let loose, that sword might just take on a life as a super villain on its own.
Hawkeye was still hiding behind one of the sealed coffins and peering around it when he caught a bit of motion within. He cursed.
“Guys, this one’s waking up too!”
Thor and Cap were busy with their own zombies and the third was still standing motionless in the middle of the room. Iron Man cursed under his breath and flew across the room, hands extended to stop the lid from opening. Hawkeye ducked under his suit and back into the room. With a summersault, he arrived at Black Widow’s side and pulled her away from immediate danger. She groaned when he moved her.
The body inside the coffin didn’t make any other moves as Iron Man stood holding the lid shut. The HUD gave a readout of a faint heartbeat that most would fail to notice. Quickly, he had JARVIS scan the other zombies, confirming his suspicions.
“Sir, I believe the body in this casket is, in fact, not dead.”
“So, not a zombie,” he said, watching Cap throw off his attacker and run for his shield.
“Indeed, sir.”
“Right, because that’s not odd at all.”
He released his hold on the lid and stepped away. Hawkeye had pulled Black Widow toward him in the meantime. JARIVS reported her life signs as stable, so he turned his attention back to the still zombie.
“Now, what’s he up to?”
After he had knocked out Black Widow, the zombie had frozen in the middle of the room. There was a cold, black rolling smoke covering their feet. Small sparks shot out from the smoke, singeing their clothes and filling the air with an acidic smell. The smell of rotting corpses floated in with the smoke.
“That manner of evil is this?” Thor called as a spark shot up and tapped his fingers where they grasped the handle of his hammer.
Cap caught up his shield and tossed it toward a wall where it rebounded and caught a zombie in the back. The zombie had been chasing after him, and it went tumbling forward with the impact, but rolled with the hit, coming back up on his feet into a martial art’s stance. Cap hesitated. “You were right, Iron Man. I don’t think we can win this one.”
Hawkeye covered his nose with the back of his hand, his lips turning down at the smell. “They’re zombies! Why is this so hard?”
Then the zombie in the middle of the room finally moved. He threw out his hand, black lighting arching up from the ground all around them following his gesture. Black Widow screamed and arched on the ground. Hawkeye was thrown back into a wall, his hands held out before him, reaching for Black Widow.
Cap stood stock still as lighting raced up his legs, and it took the HUD for Tony to see that his whole body was shivering uncontrollably. Thor, thankfully, was unaffected. He dodged an attack by one zombie and charged the lighting controller. He snarled in rage and crashed into him.
The lighting stopped instantly and the two of them struggled on the ground.
Once more, the Iron Man armor was given a boost by the excess electricity. He charged his repulsors and fired twin beams at one zombie that was reaching for Thor. Cap kept the other one busy chasing him and dodging the shield.
The one hit by the repulsors fell back from Thor, but remained on his feet, his arms up blocking his face from the most of the beams.
“Nothing works on them!” Tony cursed.
Then the zombie chasing Cap turned about and caught the shield in his hands, spinning with the extra momentum and threw it at Iron Man. Cap called out a warning at the same time as JARVIS. Iron Man tried to dodge, but the shield caught him in the ribs in the same place that the zombie had hit him in before. The suit cracked and sparked and started to smoke.
Cursing, Tony struggled out of the gauntlets, freeing his hands so that he could reach the clasps for the chest plate. He stumbled away from the fight as he felt his chest heat up. Cap caught the zombie’s attention again and finally the armor fell away from his hands.
Tony fell against the coffin and gasped, his heart pounding loud in his ears. He turned toward Hawkeye. “I can’t breathe. I have to get the chest plate off.”
He watched Hawkeye’s eyes go wide and his arm reach for him. His lips were moving, but Tony couldn’t hear what he was saying. There was the sound of wind rushing in his ears and that cool breeze was back, blowing away the stench of dead bodies.
The glass under his bare hand was cool after the heat of the sparking armor. He turned to look at the body in the coffin and really looked at it for the first time.
Long steel gray hair was tied away from her face. Her features were fine and delicate, her skin a fine tanned copper. Tony leaned heavily against the glass as his breath was stolen from him from the compress of the chest plate.
He put his other hand to the glass, silently willing the woman in the casket to open her eyes. He had a pressing need to see her eyes. He just knew they had to be stunning. He leaned forward and knew that he had to be suffering from oxygen deprivation, because it suddenly felt as if the glass was no longer separating him from the body inside. In fact, he felt himself falling forward into the coffin.
His vision went dark around the edges, then everything went white, only the sound of the wind remaining in his ears.
~*~*~
The moment Iron Man disappeared the room seemed to freeze in a stunned silence. The breeze died away and all living eyes were on the spot where he had once been.
Then a wicked chuckle swept through the room. As one, six sets of eyes turned toward the exit where The Hour at Hand stood. Thor shivered, once more reminded that this strange crazed creature reminded him a bit too much of his brother with that crooked smile and strange glint in his brown eyes.
“He’s gone! Did you see? Just ‘whoosh and gone!” He waved a hand and all but danced in place. He was still giggling.
Cap turned toward him, shield once more in hand. “What did you do with him?”
“Oh, not me. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do a thing. Well, I did, but I didn’t do anything in this room.” He pointed to the ground. “See, I haven’t even entered the room. How could I have done anything?” He danced again, his feet tapping out a happy beat on the floor, his hands clapping. “But he’s gone! He’s really gone!”
“Where has he gone?” Cap roared, taking a step toward the mad man.
“Who knows?” He said with a shrug. “Those that set the spells to protect these bodies, that’s who, but they’re long dead, are they not? You’ll have to go to the afterlife and find them and ask.” He finally stilled, his hands clasped before him in a mockery of prayer. “But all that matters, is that Tony Stark is gone from this world. Hopefully forever.”
“Bring him back.”
The Hour at Hand’s lips twisted into a frown, as if he were really sorry. “I can’t. That magic is beyond me. I had hoped the Exalted in this room would have just killed you all, but this is just as good. He was my biggest threat, and now he’s gone.” He motioned to the zombies still stand and staring at him. “And these legendary warriors will deal with you.”
“Looks to me,” Thor rumbled, “that they might be more interested in dealing with you.”
The Hour at Hand spread his hands. “As long as I don’t enter their sanctuary, I’m safe from their ire. You on the other hand, are intruding.” With that, he began to backing away into the hall. “Goodbye. You may have been worthy foes, but in the end, you were nothing to my Exalted self. May the Green Sun be your last though, for he shall rule this Creation.”
He disappeared from sight and the zombies turned back on what was left of the Avengers.