Ver 3.9 | Video

[liverletdie]

[ Welcome to Tony Stark's very swank lab, in the bowels of his company. There isn't much there, the way the camera's angled, just Tony Stark's head from above, and he's accompanied by a large sea turtle (with a human penis attached) and a few scattered sheets of metal that haven't been worked yet. The camera faces down, which means Stark looks up at the camera, giving it a look. Lately, he's gone back to the mustached look, instead of the goatee. His hands spread across the table, like he's using it to hold himself up. ]

I'm not normally one to look down on someone using science to move forward. Hell, I'd fund them, if I thought they'd take it. That's kind of the point of being a futurist, is trying to figure out ways to improve our future, and I do mean that, the communal our. Unfortunately, we have some people who get in our way at every turn, and no matter how much we look, the rabbit hole gets deeper.

I took something of a vacation recently, with a few other people, and we thought -- hey, wouldn't a diving trip be fun? But wouldn't you know it? After we head into the warm carribbean waters, there's someone determined to make our lives a living hell. I mean, keeping us out of countries, sure, and I suppose it's our fault for heading to the Caymans, because of their connection with Britain, but hey, we had every right to be there.

Anyway, when we went diving, we ran into an issue. You see, being curious, spunky imports as we are, we decided to investigate the oddities underwater. The weird thing was, we found something in there. It wasn't your standard...oddly placed underwater storage facility, it was your average underwater shadowy organization research center. Complete with, [ he gestures to the turtle with a human penis attached to it ] mutated animals. Now see, there wasn't much there. I guess we startled them, or maybe they were afraid we'd get too close eventually, but there were some interesting notes. Apparently, this thing here [ he gestures to the dick on the turtle ] was supposed to launch fire. Talk about sexually transmitted diseases. This wasn't the only one, either. I mean, the rest were other body parts, but it looks like the same thing could have applied to those too. They were mutating them to have powers.

Just think abot that.

As someone who's used technology to give myself something comparable to powers, I think I have a hell of a position to be pretty outraged by this. Who knows, they do this, what's next, they build an army of... [ He looks down at the turtle, well, it wouldn't be an army of turtles with dicks that shot fire, but... ] people with powers to take us out?

Don't lose your vigilence. It was a team effort that led to some of us figuring this out. The more we work together to take care of them, the better off we'll be.

Comments

[radiantly]

[Gently trying to avert her gaze.]

I'm just shocked it's alive after all it's been subjected to. That poor, unfortunate little animal.

[liverletdie]

Yeah, the poor guy. [ He awkwardly pats its head. ]

I'd like to say I care about it, but what it means is a lot more dire, Angelica.

[radiantly]

Do you really think they could do it? Build an army of people to take us out?

[liverletdie]

I think it's possible, yes.

Think about it, people like Vulcanus, they get powers, and they decide to take out all of the imports themselves.

Then they're the ones in power.

[radiantly]

It all sort of reminds me of that Metamen stuff. What if this is Metamen 2.0?

[liverletdie]

That's what I think it's supposed to be. This is the next attempt at trying to take us out, or at the very least, ruin us.

[radiantly]

We know they've been successful before. What's to say this stuff with the turtle isn't a red herring?

[liverletdie]

If they were red herrings, I would've expected an empty lab. There were people working there. They could've accomplished this by leaving it as abandoned, wasted experiments.

They hadn't given up on these yet.

[radiantly]

So why go with these animal experiments when we know they've had success on people in the past?

[liverletdie]

Because they have to create this all on their own. They didn't kidnap anyone and take their porter-provided powers.

This is taking power away from the porter, essentially.

[radiantly]

Lachesis isn't going to like this.

Do we have any ideas if this is at all related to those rumors about that group? Oh, what's it called? Red Death? Aren't those people supposed to have powers?

[liverletdie]

The Red Death?

There's no indication, but that doesn't mean there isn't a connection. We don't know how deep the roots go.

[radiantly]

The people from this world don't have powers though, do they? I mean, not naturally?

[liverletdie]

No, they don't.

That's what concerns me.

[radiantly]

If there's anything I can do to help... I mean, I know I'm sort of retired and all, but you know you can call on me if there's something that needs melting.

[liverletdie]

I'm sure we will, Angelica. Anything you can do to help out, we'd appreciate it.

[radiantly]

We're all in this together, each one of us.

[liverletdie]

Exactly. We'll get through it. Especially with that attitude.