LIGHTNOVELONLINE Iris and Me
Amid the constant madness that had become his life, she grounded him in a way that no one else had managed.
Chapter 76 : Dawn of a new era (Assembling part 1)
Chapter 76 : Dawn of a new era (Assembling part 1)
Nighthawk Cinema, Brooklyn, New York City, 5th of May, 15:48, in Flash Thompson’s mind
The movie had barely started and Flash was already bored out of his skull.
It was, by all accounts, a rather bland romantic drama with a love triangle, a flick that definitely wasn’t Flash’s cup of tea on his best days.
But, sometimes, a relationship forces you to compromise with your lover for it to work.
Liz had wanted to see it and he was having an off day. It had been as simple as that.
It wasn’t like he had the high-ground to deny her a lazy afternoon in his company, considering the time he was sinking in his engineering and training these days.
Flash was definitely doing his best to juggle everything and she knew that, but he suspected she wasn't quite feeling it as graciously as she let show.
So, compromise.
Now, it would have been easy to handle if Flash had been in a better mood today.
Sadly, he wasn’t, so he was barely paying token attention to what was happening on-screen, his biomechanical cortex saving a copy of what he was seeing for future reference in his and Liz's inevitable post-movie debate.
Flash had much to brood upon, after all.
His girlfriend had her head leant on his shoulder, her hair sprawled on his neck and upper torso as her attention remained fixed on the screen, one of her hands clenching his, their finger intertwined.
Flash’s attention though, was on his other hand.
Contrary to popular belief, the months since January had been plenty noteworthy for him.
Aria and her alien ‘sister’ were, of course, top of the list as far as he was concerned. Yet, it didn’t change old home life negatively.
It made it better.
Flash had, for a long time, no one to speak about his home life, now old home life. Of course, after being trapped for half an eternity in the Astral plane, it paled in comparison.
Yet, the scars remained. And now, they were just that, scars.
His mother was still a fusspot but now she had the gall to speak aloud when something displeased her in her house.
Jessie was, as always, a ray of sunshine but she had also grown more confident and had, apparently, found a calling way earlier than he ever had.
His father, though.
His feelings towards Harrison remained conflicted.
Flash had even tailed him a few times at night when he was supposedly on his way to a meeting.
It has been nice to see the badge in January but Flash still harbored a lot of distrust toward his genitor.
Yet, he hadn’t lied and each time his son shadowed him at night to check if that was still a thing, Flash felt shittier.
Flash wanted, badly needed even, to let bygones be bygones.
But the scars remained and he wasn’t even sure if they would fade in time.
There was of course the training.
Aria had been one of the brutalest task-masters he had the opportunity to learn under and he had been a rising star quarterback before the incident happened.
The effort had born fruit obviously and gifted him plenty of advantages, what with his near instant learning capacities and the ever present option to run mock-battle in a corner of his mind.
Yet it also gave Flash the opportunity to discover something about himself that he wasn’t really sure how to deal with.
Feeling a shudder coming across his frame, Flash locked all of his servomotors and neural output for a beat.
Best not to dwell about that.
Shelving the issue for later, Flash reinitialized his motor functions in their ideal parameters as he heaved a little sigh.
“Something wrong babe?” Liz muttered distractingly, still enraptured by the screen.
“Just a yawn,” He whispered back, planting a kiss on her forehead, “I’m still tired from the week is all.”
His girlfriend just ‘hmmed’ under her breath.
His rekindled relationship was also among the noteworthy events.
Flash had, in all honesty, not expected them to give things a second chance that soon, if ever.
Hell, he wasn’t even fully human anymore for fuck's sake.
Yet, even if his juggling between school, training, engineering and the occasional date was stretching him a bit thin, Flash was definitely happy it had turned out like that.
He had changed and so had she. The time apart had done the both of them a lot of good.
He liked, really liked the girl.
Amid the constant madness that had become his life, she grounded him in a way that no one else had managed.
What if it hurt her?
Well, no one except his fake and a little batty twin.
Aria was a lot when you lived with her on a daily basis.
It wasn’t what she did because she was a role model of good manners since that fateful day in January.
No, it's what she said that made living with her a constant challenge. An intellectual one, mind you, but still a challenge. She regularly intervened in the family's more adult conversations with points and counterpoints that left Flash puzzled at times and reeling in others.
Yet, she made sense each time and it was infuriating to have his worldview shattered on a daily basis. Apparently, months spent with her for sole company hadn’t been enough to desensitize him.
Worse still, she was also a careful listener. He had known, of course, since the two had talked at length for way too much time yet watching her weave her magic with his parents and his sister was mesmerizing in a way.
The Thomson family talked now, shared what they felt about and resolved conflicts with carefully worded reprimands and apologies.
She’ll probably listen to me if I spoke with her.
No, she definitely will.
But what if it hurt her too?
Quashing his own feelings once more, the movie still droning in his ears, Flash fetched an uncompleted design from his database.
Engineering, creating things with his intellect and solving problems combined into a solid second place finish in the ranking of major things that happened in the past months.
He had taken to the thing with a single-minded purpose since he was, after all, uniquely qualified to do so.
To this day, Flash remained amazed at how much he liked it.
It was maybe poetic in a fucked up sort of way that his new life was focused this much on building things when he had previously been a mean and destructive little shit with a boatload of insecurities.
Now, Flash drowned his own insecurities in his work.
And what a work it was!
In a few months time with admittedly very limited resources, he had built himself a lab, booby-trapped it to the gills, created his own machinery to help him, fabricated a ton of more or less useful gizmos just for the fun of it and built both armor and weapons.
Dredging up the schematics for his latest iteration of Jessica’s armor, he idly contemplated if he could improve it even further.
Nothing jumped out at him at a glance, not with his hands severely tied until Aria and he resolved two major issues.
Aria hadn’t meddled with his creations but had warned him about two things in specific.
EMP-based weapons and a friendly reminder that he wasn’t the only magnetokinetic around.
The first fact grated him something awful because, without a viable method to insulate his designs, he was essentially limited to what amounted to modern plate-armor. He had found a way around it with the use of hydraulics and gasses but it was bulky, relatively impractical and prone to failures if not carefully monitored.
Yes, Flash had to resort to steam-punk design in his engineering because electromagnetism was apparently the plague of all power-armor wearers.
Both Aria and he had slaved for hours each week trying to come up with a way around it but so far they remained unsuccessful.
The second though, it unnerved him. Flash himself had the possibility to counter someone who would try to rip him apart but his power remained nascent and that was before you simply said electromagnet out loud.
Granted, said magnet would have to be immune to his cyberpathy but anyone clever enough could probably do that. All the had to do was take the frequency he broadcasted to make everything more complex than a knife submit to him and start jamming.
It was possible, after all Flash had done so himself as a thought exercise. It had taken him less than an hour to crack it.
And so, Flash had recently taken to trying to discover a non-magnetic metal as a way to pass time at school.
The calculations were mind boggling if you tried to reach an absolute zero magnetism threshold without sacrificing everything else around, otherwise he would have already scoffed and used ceramite instead.
<“Flashy, we have a situation.”> Aria suddenly contacted him directly in his brain through his smartphone, bypassing his psy-shield with ease as she pulled him out of his fugue.
Flash tensed.
<“What is it?”> He cut to the chase instantly.
Instead of answering immediately, a world map was forwarded to him.
<“Gwen and I stumbled upon the X-Men while shopping.”> The golden girl started preambuled, <“I had promised to the Phoenix to lend a hand to His telepath if I ever met her and, since I value my life, I did just that.”>
Flash nodded absently.
Not pissing off Cosmic Forces was indeed a sensible idea.
<“One thing led to another and the Phoenix offed a meddling telepath a few minutes ago.”> Aria carried on, <“The problem is that the guy had facilities around the world dedicated to mutant cloning studies and he programmed his flesh puppets to go on a rampage if he bit it.”>
Flash eyes narrowed as his attention snapped to a very specific point.
<“And there’s one in New York.”> He said, his eyes darting to the two others on American soil.
<“Of course there is,”> Aria drawled, <“New York is the sole city of most import across the globe, after all.”>
Flash blinked, having the very distinct feeling that he was missing a joke somewhere.
<“And you aren’t more worried because?”> He asked instead.
<“I know what to expect and the entrance is in an abandoned underground line.”> She explained, <“The entrance is, also, severely fortified and the defenses aren’t easily disabled if you’re not the original owner. I estimate that by the time we go there it will be barely breached.”>
<“Do I have the time to swing by the house?”> Flash asked.
<“You should if you forget any attempts at discretion.”> Aria answered drily.
That made Flash pause.
<“Could you pick me up?”> He asked an instant later, <“I recall you going to Manhattan, it’s not that big a detour.”>
The line got silent for a beat.
<“I think I can manage.”> Aria answered, <“Meet us on the roof, it’ll be faster.”>
<“Roger.”> Flash answered as the line went dead once more.
The cyborg then nudged his girlfriend slightly, prompting her attention to him.
“I’m sorry babe,” He started, his tone apologetic, “But we have a situation.”
Liz’s eyes narrowed as her mouth pinched.
She had obviously picked up on his clue.
“How serious?” The auburn haired girl asked.
“Cloned mutants outbreak in downtown Manhattan serious.” He deadpanned in a whisper.
She gulped slightly.
“Could you bring back the car if I’m not finished before the movie ends?” Flash asked politely as he started to rise.
“Of course.” She answered easily, a little smile upturning the corner of her lips, “But you’ll owe me another date.”
“I wouldn’t have dreamt otherwise babe.” Flash answered easily, bending himself for a last kiss.
As Flash started to make his way out of the movie theater, he kept contemplating the strange turn his life had taken since January.
At least I escaped that bore of a movie.
If his attention kept darting back toward his hand as he walked the theater’s corridor, an image of a thinner design with longer nails regularly coming back, he didn’t say anything.
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