"Happy, Happy, what happened to you?" Jarvis asked, hearing the blast.
"Uh, ahem — I was just heading up to the top of the Rand Building to fetch the boss, where Spider-Man dumped him. Out of nowhere the briefcase went off. But I'm not hurt. I'll be over in a minute."
Happy looked down at the case, now blown clean through with a hole, and his mouth twitched. A full 12 millimeters of alloy — thick enough that stopping bullets was nothing — and now it was totaled.
Then again — we hadn't even cracked open your neural-pulse pistol yet, so how'd it blow? Spider-Man, you piece of work. Or is your anti-tamper device just that good — the gun leaves your side and it self-destructs on its own?
Ahem — if Tony ever asked Spider-Man that to his face, Spider-Man really would say: Yes, my anti-tamper device is exactly that sensitive. Two hundred meters (660 feet) from me and it blows itself sky-high!
Which, honestly, left Maya no choice. Her sensing range was exactly 200 meters. Any farther and, if she hadn't set off the Explosive Tag, Tony would've uncovered the truth — that her "science" was pure fantasy in a lab coat!
Yes. That thoroughly sci-fi "neural-pulse pistol" had an Explosive Tag stuffed inside it.
Why would Maya do that? Simple. The oldest trope in the movie book: the enemy seizes your weapon and turns it back on you. Even 007 thought to guard against that, rigging up some bizarre, topsy-turvy trick gun — so how could Madam President not take a few extra precautions? True, no one else could actually fire the thing — but Madam President had still dug herself a little pit, and in the end it was Happy who fell into it.
(Author's note: This 007 is the home-grown kind!)
Maya could dial the Explosive Tag's yield up or down. If Tony had tucked the gun into his pants pocket, she'd have kept the blast precise and close-range — at most a little spark, enough to singe his crown jewels or so. But since it had gone into the case, and the case was this sturdy, she stopped bothering to throttle the blast. Wasn't going to kill anyone anyway.
Early the next morning, Tony in his Spider-suit was splashed across every front page, with page two given over to the horrifying human-experiment photos.
Tony's Grand Operation. Spider-Man Exposes a House of Human-Experiment Horrors. Tony — America's Conscience? Yes! We're With You, Spider-Man! New Weapons Threaten Conventional Arms? Big Arms Dealers Panic! Do Mutants Have Rights and Equality? An Analysis of the Mutant Experiment Data. The Emperor Is Bare-Assed — We Must Face Reality!
In the school library, Madam President leafed through the morning papers and nodded to herself. Last night's performance had gone off well enough. On the matter of butchering mutants — using mutant children for human experiments — nine out of ten took the opposing view, and the rest just came at Tony from a different angle, questioning his motives. Whether they truly believed it in their hearts, or public opinion had strong-armed them into writing it that way, hardly mattered. One way or another, the tide Maya had wanted was finally rolling in.
Why did Madam President go to all this trouble? First, to be clear: she was no mutant supporter — not even a mutant sympathizer. Rescuing her classmate Liz Black was the original goal, and the fuse for all of it; beyond that, Maya mainly wanted to help those pitiful mutant kids. She was no saint. But since she had the power, and the children were all innocent, why not spend a little effort saving them?
There might be some risk to Maya — but the worst it could cost her was a Shadow Clone getting blown to bits. For those children, it was a turning point onto a whole new life, a thing that could rewrite their entire futures.
That trade? Worth it.
"Maya, everyone's assembled. Do we set off now?"
Just then Nana came running in, calling out to her.
"Move out!"
Soon the gates of Manhattan Community Elementary School swung wide open, and a crowd of students hoisting signs set off toward Manhattan's East Side.
The signs were a glorious mess. Some bore a big headshot of their classmate Liz; some read Equality, Human Rights; some said Discriminate Against Mutants — er, that one had a fat red X slashed across it. A few kids wore homemade Spider-Man masks with I Support Tony Stark written on the chest, and some hoisted a banner together that read Mutants and ordinary folk are like Black people and white people.
Maya even spotted a couple of odd ducks holding up signs for World Charity and Peace. She let them be — pulling this together on such short notice, the result was already pretty impressive.
"Maya, are we really going to be okay doing this?"
Nana had a little I Love You, Tony sign of her own, and she sidled over to Maya to whisper the question.
Maya was in a white Adidas athletic tee up top, slim sky-blue jeans below, flat casual shoes, hair pulled into one crisp ponytail — the whole look fresh and bright, brimming with youthful energy.
She, however, carried no sign and wore no slogan. "Relax. You know it as well as I do — in America, everyone has the right to march and demonstrate. Even us elementary schoolers!"
"But we're going after big, powerful people. And it looks like we're the only ones who answered Tony's call — nobody else has budged! Come to think of it, why hasn't Tony himself shown up?" Nana asked, half worried, half puzzled.
Maya's mouth twitched. That Tony — no idea if he's back on his feet yet. Cut the nerves in all four of his limbs and his tongue last night; it's been over an hour now, so he ought to be able to talk, at least?
"Achoo — achoo!"
Tony fired off a couple of sneezes and picked up his phone, ringing yet again. "Hello — Senator Hercules, relax, I won't make any more statements about the mutant business — you... you want to publicly support me? And you're asking when I'll go march? You want to give a speech on-site, rallying behind me?"
A long moment later, Tony hung up and cursed. "Goddamn politicians — every last one of them, shameless!"
"Oh? This one's not telling you to keep your mouth shut?" Jarvis asked, scanning the diagnostic report.
Lying in bed, Tony said helplessly, "Me, shut up? Shut up my ass! They're political opportunists, every last one of them. All thanks to that Spider-Man, that walking con job. Now I tell the reporters I'm innocent — you think that'll do a thing?"
Jarvis didn't deign to answer that. He simply said, "Young master, there's nothing seriously wrong with you — you can get up and walk now. Looks like Spider-Man went easy on you. Those criminals from before were laid out for three days at least."
That set Tony off. "So now I'm supposed to thank him? Damn it — not content with using my name to stir up trouble last night, he screwed me out of $5 million in diamonds too!"
"Uh, boss — strictly speaking, Spider-Man didn't screw you. He told you up front there was an anti-tamper device—"
"You've still got the nerve to chime in? When you get right down to it, isn't this whole thing your fault? Last time Spider-Man swiped the Forgive Hat — the one with the Signal Switcher in it — off you, he used that switcher to plant a Trojan in our supercomputer. That's how he stole Jarvis's controls out from under us last night!"
Happy felt thoroughly wronged. Cut off halfway through his own sentence, and now they wanted to pin the whole thing on him — strapping man though he was, there was no way he was taking the fall for a mess this big.
"Boss, even if I've got no credit, I've put in the sweat! Last time, I got beaten black and blue by Spider-Man before the thing got taken — I didn't want any of that either. And last night, I nearly got blown up by the self-destruct rig!"