Chapter 22: Chapter 22 Unholy Trinity
Hogarth's flat tone and unexpectedly course language takes me by surprise, and I let out a chuckle before I can control myself.
"No ma'am, those numbers are very real."
For a moment, Jeri just looks at the Blue Box in wonder, and I can already see plots and calculations forming behind her eyes.
"If this is true, then…"
"It would revolutionize the way the world uses energy? A new era for transportation, for machinery, for standards of living? All that and more, Mrs. Hogarth, all that and more."
Giving a slow, thoughtful nod in agreement, Hogarth's eyes remain fixed on the Blue Box, as she starts to catch on to the full implications of the advanced piece of technology in front of her.
There's still one problem though.
"I'm inclined to believe you on whether this thing works or not, and that it is in fact capable of doing the things you claim it can do."
Before a smile can fully form on my face, she cuts in again, raising a hand to stop me from interrupting her.
"But, that's because of a single reason, which as it happens is also the reason why I won't help your company market it."
While I had expected something like this, it was still somewhat disappointing to just hear my proposition denied like that, and I can't keep it entirely from showing through my voice as I reply to her.
"And just what might that reason be Mrs. Hogarth?"
"I've heard of these kind of numbers only once before, and while I might not be a scientist, I know enough to recognize Stark-tech when I'm looking at it. I'm not going to waste my life and career trying to fight Iron Man on corporate theft."
I try to placate her fears, but I already know that I'm fighting a losing battle. Tony Stark was the man in business. Sure, the Army didn't like him at all since he had stopped making weapons for them, and Fury most likely felt the urge to strangle the smug man at least thrice a day, but the public loved him, and Stark Industries had been a giant in global industry ever since World War II.
Stark (both father and son) had appeared untouchable for so long, people like Hogarth didn't even consider trying to get into a fight with them, even if they had a chance at winning. Hammer had tried it for years, and all that he had to show for it during that time was being forced to play second fiddle to Tony, only to end up in jail.
People who crossed a Stark generally tended to regret doing so eventually.
Still, there's no harm in trying.
"Mrs. Hogarth, do you know how many people have made an Arc Reactor for public use?"
Trinity gives a slow blink as she considers my question, looking for the hidden angle in the obvious looking question.
"Tony Stark, of course."
I give a grin at her answer as I lean forwards in my chair, Hogarth subconciously mimicking my movement.
"Nope! Sure, he has made Arc Reactors for himself, but nobody else is flying around with that kind of tech in their chest. Nobody, Mrs. Hogarth. Not just the public or other tech companies, the goverment and all their various organizations don't either, even though Stark used to be their biggest contractor. Now, what does all that tell you?"
Slowly I can see realization dawn in the woman's eyes, as she leans back into her office chair a little, her gaze distance as she mulls over the full implications of what I'm telling her. Then her eyes snap to mine, and I can see a predatory glint in her eyes when she figures it out.
"He didn't take out a patent on it. Technically, we could be the first ones to bring the Arc Reactor to the market." she says in awe.
Clever girl.
I give the lawyer a sly grin as I place my fist underneath my chin, my entire posture one of practised nonchalance, my entire air a mix of just the right amounts of carefree and determined.
"We could win this, Hogarth. If you're up for it it, that is."
I can tell that she's seriously considering it, and for a moment it seems as if she's going to agree as her eyes travel from the rapport to the Blue Box and back again, but then she lets out a sigh and closes her eyes with a shake from her head.
"Even if we might, might, win, Stark will come down on us like a ton of bricks. For fuck's sakes, the man gets captured, escapes using self-made power armour, only to return there and blow his kidnappers to kingdome come! And over here, he has a multi-billion company and an army of lawyers behind him! And you want me to fight that man? Again, what you got here is clever, I won't deny that, but I won't risk my career by pissing off a man as powerful as Stark. I won't do it." she says with heavy emphasis, and I can tell that she fully means it too.
I gave a deep theatrical sigh at the lawyer's words, fishing something from the inside pocket of my suit jacket, fiddling with it in a painfully obvious manner as I start talking to myself in a clearly fake morose tone of voice.
"Ah, that's such a shame. Understandable, of course, but a such a shame nonetheless. Why if only there were something to help me convince you. Just this one thing, but oh what could it possibly be?" I muse to myself, glancing at Hogarth from the corner of my eye with a sly smirk.
Who kept following the small vial that I was rolling around between my palms with her eyes, until curiosity got the better of her and she gave an annoyed sigh.
"What is that, Mr. McCole?"
"Oh this little thing?" I say in a faux-surprised tone, and to my amusement I can see that my purposely bad acting is getting on her nerves.
"Why it's just a little something that me and my team cooked up. It's not even all that useful really. All it does is return someone to the prime of their life, without any drawbacks or a hint of pain, at a fraction of a cost of years of plastic surgery."
And with that, I gently place the vial in front of Jeri on her desk, who can't keep her eyes off of it after my bomb-shell.
"What?" she mutters to herself in awe, and pressing my advantage now that I had broken her suspension of disbelief, I gesture to the case once more.
"Of course, I wouldn't make such a bold claim without any proof to back it up, so if you would please pick up the tablet on the bottom of the case, please?"
Hesitantly following my instructions, Hogarth picked up the tablet, only to nearly drop it when it immediately switched on, showing Burstein sitting in the living room of what could only be the house of an elderly person, judging by the sheer amount of knitting that was visible, as well as the old, shrivelled up lady that was sitting next to my scientist on the plush couch.
The old lady was actually someone Toomes had put me in contact with, partly to mess with me and partly to see how I would react, and just what my plans were exactly. The venerable old lady was nearing 80, but a rough life as a single mother of four had taken its toll, and while she was beloved by most of her neighbourhood (including Toomes) due to always standing ready for anyone if they needed help, she was unable to support herself in her old age, living mostly of donations from her friends and remaining family.
Today, that would change.
Before I had come here, I had tried to calculate every possible outcome of my conversation with Hogarth (and while it was of course impossible to determine every social human interaction, I felt I came pretty far nonetheless) and I had taken into account that I would need to show her my greatest trump card at the moment in order to convince her to work for me.
So I had sent Burstein to the house of the old lady with a tablet and a vial, and told him my plan, only to enact if we contacted him through the devices. When Jeri inadvertently face-timed them by picking up the tablet from the case, they were both drinking tea from fine china, and apparently Burstein saw something switch on the screeen at his side of the conversation, as he lowered the cup with a smile, giving an excited little wave at the screen.
To my immense amusement I saw Hogarth start waving as well in her stupor, before she caught herself, sending me a deathly glare when she caught my amused snort.
"Ah hello there, Mrs. Hogarth, correct?" Burstein called out, and at Hogarth's confirming nod, he continued.
"Right, I'm assuming Michael told you about our Rejuvenation Serum, which is why we're face-timing right now. In order to give you proof that it actually does indeed work, I have my lovely assistant here with me!" Burstein says with a happy smile, turning to his side with a wide sweep of his arm, indicating the old lady sitting next to him, who raised her hand and gave a shaky little wave of her own.
"Now, Ms. Jackson, if you would please ingest the Rejuvenation Serum? Here, let's wash it down with some tea shall we?" Burstein told his 'assistant', who nodded at the scientist's exited proposal, giving a soft smile of her own as she held out her little cup and saucer.
Pulling the stopper from a vial similar to the one now lying on Hogarth's desk, Burstein emptied the contents into Ms. Jackson's cup, stirring it gently with a silver spoon, before handing it back to her.
To the aged lady's credit, she nearly downed the entire cup in one go, a small shudder going through her frame as she squeezed her watery eyes shut with an adorable scrunched up face.
"Oof! So bitter!" she said in good humour.
And that's when Hogarth nearly screamed out loud.
Because, right in front of her, in real-time, she was looking on as Miss Jackson slowly started to de-age, looking like she was in her early sixties within ten minutes, and looking not a day over forty after another fifteen minutes.
Unfortunately for Miss Jackson, we hadn't dared to make the effects more powerful, as we were afraid that the impact of Extremis on such a frail body would give a too great of an initial shock to her system, killing her before the effects could really take effect.
Still, looking forty years younger after roughly half an hour was more than enough.
Slowly tearing her eyes away from the tablet in front of her (which showed the 80 year old lady literally jumping from her couch in a single smooth movement, catching the laughing Burstein in a bear-hug that nearly lifted him off his feet) her head turning towards me as her face was filled with shock.
She opened and closed her mouth a few times, but no words came out, before her eyes settled on a familiar looking vial in front of her on her desk, shining innocently in the light streaming into the office from the windows behind the powerful lawyer.
Once more Hogarth looked at me, before she put her trembling hands flat on the wooden surface of her desk, squared her shoulder and took a deep breath, before she looked at me with the professional mask of a top-tier businesswoman (though I could see her eyes keep flitting back towards the vial occasionally).
"And just who shall I be representing, Mr. McCole?"
I grin in triumph at snaring yet another pawn for my short-term goals, and as I lean forwards I tell her the name of my company, which I had chosen after realizing who my true rival was in my quest for omnipotence, even if we had yet to cross paths.
"Titan Solutions."
My company struck the global market like a bomb. Within days, I had offers from just about every major car company in the world, every single fabricator of airplanes, as well as public transport.
And that was just the motorised side of things.
Hogarth (who now looked to be barely thirty) had really come through for me, and made sure to promote the multi-functionality and low-emission of my Blue Box with the major players in various branches of industry and even the government and local authorities (how she even got the pull for such things I didn't know and frankly I'd rather not find out).
She found other lawyers and business officials who she felt could be trusted not to screw me over, who in turn started brokering deals between Titan Solutions and the veritable tidal wave of companies that wanted to get their hands on the advanced piece of technology, given that it was currently the only one of its kind (on the market, that is).
Truthfully, I had neither a head for business, nor a taste for it, so I was more than happy to just hand the reigns of turning my new company into a technology giant over to Hogarth, who just stared at me like I was an idiot at the amount of freedom I gave her, before she just shook her head and got to work.
Making me a millionaire.
Honestly, I had preferred for one of my scientists to take the lead in the company, but after I came back from my meeting with Hogarth late at night (we had kept on discussing our strategy for another six hours, before she sent me home with the message that we would pick up where we left off the following day) I sat down in our living room, Sterns and Burstein on the couch reading scientific journals (Sterns was reading two at once) with Mason lying on his stomach in front of the TV on the rug I had bought, a dissasembled Blue Box in front of him.
When I took a seat in my favorite armchair, snagging a piece of left-over pizza from the coffee table as I did, I offered them the CEO position of Titan Solutions.
All three just immediately went 'not it!' and then gleefully laughed at my expense of being stuck with the corporate side of things for the forseeable future, instead of the SCIENCE! part of things.
While the Blue Box had fulfilled its task of putting my company on the map quite beautifully thanks to Hogarth's contacts and knowledge of what to outsource to whom, it was the next piece of technology that Titan Solutions put out that won the heart of the common people and captured their imagination, making sure that I was untouchable as far as S.H.I.E.L.D. was concerned.
We didn't reveal the Rejuvenation Serum to the public, as that was meant to be something that would spread from word of mouth amongst the richest tiers of society, which would allow us to bleed them dry while circumventing FDA-regulations.
No, we promoted something even more amazing.
We told the world that we had found a cure for Alzheimer's.
Using the way the amount of neurons in his own brain had increased, as well as the way the neurons in mine (and Burstein's and Mason's as well) worked far more efficiently, Sterns had found a serum which would counter-act the degenerative effects Alzheimer's had on the brain, effectively curing it.
Unfortunately a lifetime solution was nearly impossible to create (though that didn't stop Sterns from working on it), but with the way things stood, we could cure people of one of the most terrible diseases that plagued the human race, with only one shot every two to three years when the effects of Alzheimer's started to act up again.
Revealing that had secured us interviews with every major news outlet across the country, even though we kept stressing that, due to FDA-regulations, it would still take a very long time before we could actually start curing people.
Nobody cared.
To them, we had gone from complete unknowns, to national heroes overnight.
Which brought the scariest part of this venture with it.
Actually going public.
It would be the first time in more than half a year that Sterns would be walking freely in public (disregarding the rural little village in Africa where he had become some sort of witch-doctor to the local people), and I certainly wasn't entirely comfortable myself with showing my face on every TV in America, effectively taunting S.H.I.E.L.D.
Still, everything went better than expected really. Audiences usually reacted with shocked gasps whenever Sterns walked onto the stage, but with my hulking form beside him (I always made sure that my eyes were glowing a bright orange, though I also made sure to sound as eloquent as possible whenever I was asked to speak in order to not be seen as a mere brute) nobody got it in their minds to harass him over his mutated appearance.
And then when he delivered our pre-prepared sob story about how the Abomination had forced his mutation, which caused him to hide out of fear, but not give up on trying to help humanity from the shadows because of his inherent humbleness, he quickly turned into an almost martyr-like figure. Someone who used a deformity cruelly enforced on him to better the people around him.
While it didn't go viral like the Blue Box and the Alzheimer's cure had gone, the finished product of Burstein's bulletproof leather experiments were very positively received by the NYPD, as we were willing to supply a material far superior to Kevlar at a way cheaper price.
I had also used the pieces to line the insides of my armour, both as yet another layer of durability as well as an isolating material, which allowed me to reach greater temperatures without worrying about frying my suit.
As far as the world was considered, Titan Solutions had made it, and made it big time too.
Of course it couldn't last. Sooner or later (and I was banking on sooner. Maybe something between one and two weeks, if Pepper didn't alert him before that of course) Tony Stark would put two and two together and realize that the new technology that had taken the energy industry by storm had awfully similar specs as his own tech and then there would be hell to pay, though with Hogarth at my side I had at least a hope of stalling (or hell, even winning from) the genius until I was powerful enough that it really didn't even matter anymore whether or not he would win the inevitable lawsuit.
And that's not even getting into regular spooks like the CIA taking one look at my super strong body or they would try to get their hands on my research, with S.H.I.E.L.D. right on their heels.
However, just 'disappearing' me or seizing my company was completely out of the question, if the sheer amount of times I showed up on social media sites or on TV in a top trending article was anything to go by.
I was a huge celebrity, with some decrying me as a freak or even a demon, but also with a smaller group of people calling me the next step in human evolution.
The majority merely thought I was something to fanboy about when they saw me lift a school bus over my head with ease for a publicity stunt (which incidentally involved a lot of structural shenanigans worthy of a Penn and Teller preformance).
Gone was the need for stealth, or trying to operate without getting seen, now I just walked around in public in broad daylight, someone stopping me every ten meters or so, asking for a selfie with me. Apparently the deals Hogarth had my army of lawyers broker as well as my newfound celebrity status had made various shadow organizations to keep to a 'wait and see' approach for now, as I was too much of a public figure to move overtly against.
After all, I was the guy who found the tragic hero, Doctor Sterns, and who had allowed the good man to experiment on me, offering myself up as a guinea pig so that humanity could be advanced.
The parallels between Steve Rogers and myself which I deliberately enforced (I taught myself to speak with an authentic Brooklyn accent, and even lied about being an infirm youth before my transformation) certainly didn't hurt.
One of the more unforeseen benefits of suddenly finding myself amongst one of the most famous people in the world (or, well, at the very least New York) is that other famous people wanted to hang out with me (more likely though they just wished to be seen with me).
Still, I had Will Smith listed in my phone's contacts!
How awesome is that!?
And abusing my newfound status as one of the (soon to be) rich and (most definitely) famous, I had managed to get myself a V.I.P-ticket to an event tonight where an upcoming singer would be making her debut.
Trish Walker, with her hit song 'I want your Cray-Cray', or whatever it was called.
I walked towards the club, making sure that people saw me going to the party and stopping for every autograph and selfie request that was made in order to make people even more sympathetic to me. Feeling particularly cheeky, I waved to my CIA tail for the night, which I saw was a different one that had been posted outside of my factory the day after I had gone public.
Oh look, my NSA tail thought I had been waving at him!
Goverment spooks (or worse) had been hounding my steps every moment since my great big mug had been shown on national television, but not a single one had dared to make a move as I made sure to be seen by the masses every moment I stepped outside, interacting with regular civilians.
All of it just to keep me in the mind of as many people as possible in order to label myself as too hot to handle for covert organizations like S.H.I.E.L.D.
Finally, after a three hour walk, I finally entered the club, and there she was in all of her beautiful glory.
Trish Walker, in a red latex corset on the big screen.
And oh yeah, Jessica Jones was there as well I guess.
Walking towards the sullen girl who was trying her hardest to gain attention by looking as broody as she could, I couldn't help but compare the two sisters to each other.
One was almost frail looking and flat as a board, while the other had a strong, feline face with a body that had all the right curves in all the right places. One had bleak skin and listless black hair, while the other had a healthy tan on her and vibrant golden hair. One dressed herself as is she bought her clothes from a thrift shop, the other was currently dancing in a short Gucci-dress.
In my previous life, I had somewhat of a crush on Trish Walker, and it seemed that my tastes haven't really changed, even after rebirth.
Though in this life I did like Asparagus for some weird reason.
Unfortunately, tonight I needed to deal with the sister that looked like a depressed, bedraggled cat that was accidentally dragged inside, instead of her bombshell of a sister who was currently having the time of her life.
Of course, before I could get to her I needed to worm my way through a throng of people, which wasn't made any easier when they began to recognize who I was (I have a fairly unique body type after all) and they started swarming me, Trish's performance forgotten for the moment.
While annoying, good PR is currently all that stands between me and shady government officials who want to cut me open and see what makes me tick, so I put on my best smile and started shaking hands and signing autographs (a highlight of the night was when a girl, instead of offering me a piece of paper or something, simply lifted up her shirt with a challenging grin) as I went over to Trish and her posse.
"Michael! You came!"
I could tell Trish was pretty far gone by this point, as she let out a great holler of glee and hugged me with a flying tackle. Taking it in stride and deciding to just enjoy having a beautiful woman in a thin dress press herself close to me, I let out a booming laugh of my own and hugged her back.
"Of course Trish, when I got the invite I just knew I had to come!" I replied, putting on a faux-enthousiastic tone of voice which grated on my own ears.
Anything to keep the public mask in place.
PR is life.
Literally.
"Oh! Oh, oh oh! Have you met my friends?!"
And with that she drags me off to shake hands with what I have labelled in my head as 'the most boring people on planet earth'.
Seriously.
How could you possibly stretch a discussion about shoes to last more than an hour!?
Still we finally, finally came to the real reason why I had responded to Trish's agent contacting me for this night's party.
"And this is my sister Jessica!"
Said sister turned around with a roll of her eyes, undoubtedly annoyed at one more 'friend' of Trish's she has to meet, but when she finally saw me, her eyes lit up with interest.
As I'm the closest things she's come to meeting someone who is like her, I'm not surprised.
"Hello there!" I boom easily over the loud music, getting a hesitant nod in return.
For the following hours I remained close to the two siblings, making sure to strike up conversations with Jessica as often as I could, though Trish seemed to be the jealous type, as she kept demanding my attention.
Eventually, the events played out much the same like in the show (though I was surprised to find that this time, I featured in the heated discussion between them when they left the club, with Trish drunkenly exclaiming that Jessica always took her stuff, even her new friends) after which Jessica demolished an ATM and Trish took off in a limo.
Honestly I'd much rather have gone with the limo instead of following Jessica's footsteps as she made her way from the party in some aimlessly wandering direction, but Jessica was useful to me, while Trish (other than a possible one night stand, which might even turn out to be deadly for her given the internal heat of my body) simply wasn't.
Which lead to me calling out to the lithe woman with bills stuffed down her shirt roughly two blocks away from the party as we were walking across a small plaza which had stone tables for playing chess scattered across it.
"You do know stealing is wrong, don't you?!"
Jessica froze in her tracks, before shooting a furtive glance at me as I approached her from behind.
"The fuck are you talking about?"
I continued to walk until I was standing in front of the young woman, who was somewhat hunched over and holding her arms protectively in front of her stomach.
"You know, I have seen a lot of weird shit in my life, put a girl who's what, a hundred pounds soaking wet, rip apart an ATM like it's made of rice-paper? Now that's something you don't see every day." I said with a deep chuckle, keeping an eye on passer-by's.
Thankfully, due to the late hour there were hardly any people on the streets, and while I did get a look or two, most people seemed content to just hurry on home to their beds.
"Look, I don't know what you think you saw-"
"I saw you rip apart an ATM, then reach inside and take the cash."
"…. No matter what you think you saw, I didn't do shit."
And with that she walks past me, trying to shoulder me out of the way as she goes, which surprises me when she actually succeeds in moving me, and which surprises her when I barely stumble from her shoulder check.
Turning with her, I call out to her as she tries to walk away from me, though I can see the interest in her eyes increase at actually experiencing a portion of my strength first-hand.
"Aren't you tired?"
Giving me a puzzled look, Jessica doesn't stop walking, forcing me to try and keep up with her, which my longer strides allow me to do easily.
"Tired? Of what, you?" she bits out, but all I do is laugh, which as expected, only serves to make her even more annoyed.
"No, of hiding what you can do."
That puts her to a stop, looking down at the nose of her boots, her black hair falling across her face like an imitation of a particularly unflattering curtain.
"I have to hide."
"Why?"
"Because-!" Jessica starts to yell, whirling around to face me with fire in her eyes, but the fight quickly leaves her when she actually starts to consider what she's about to say.
"Because? Because of what? Your sister?"
Not getting a response from the heartbroken young woman in front of me, I decide to press on.
"Look, I didn't hear all of what you were shouting at each other outside of the club back there, but I did catch an argument revolving around money."
Jessica still doesn't react, so I'll take it as a positive sign and continue talking.
"Let me guess, she's the rich one, and you're the poor one that needs to mooch off of her?"
Finally I get a reaction from her, as her head whips up to face me, and she shoots forwards until we're standing chest to chest, her finger poking me heard in the stomach (hard being somewhat relative here: had I been a baseline human, those taps would've been enough to send me to the ground, gasping for air, but as I was now I barely even registered them other than soft little impacts).
"I don't fucking need her! I don't need anybody!"
"Yes, as you have so astutely proven by robbing an ATM. Clearly, you are doing great for yourself." I reply, sarcasm almost physically dripping from my every word, and while Jessica wants to contest my claim, the fact that she is currently pressing said stolen money against her stomach clearly takes some of the fight out of her.
Time to go for the kill.
"Allow me to propose a deal."
At my words, Jessica gives me a disgusted look and quickly backs away from me, her arms closing a little tighter around her body. For a moment I don't understand her sudden reaction, but when it hits me I nearly face-palm.
"Not that kind of deal! God, what the hell is wrong with you!"
"Me?! You're the one that goes up to me in the middle of the night, and offers me a 'deal'! What the hell was I supposed to think, creep!"
"Are you kidding me right now?! I'm not a creep!"
"Is exactly what a creep would say!"
"For God's sakes woman, you're not even my type!"
"See! This is about sex with you isn't it!"
"Would you just-" I trail of in fury, my hands itching to strangle the enraged woman in front of me, before I let out a deep breath in order to sooth myself (which due to my high temperature and the cold of the December night, makes me billow out a great cloud of steam) as I pitch my nose in a desperate move to try and stay calm.
"Look, I was just going to offer you a job, so you don't need to mooch of your sister anymore, or rip apart ATM's for a bit of cash."
Calming down a bit at my offer of a job, Jessica gives me a sceptical look as she starts to lose her aggressive stance a little.
"You? Give me a job? Why?"
'Because I really want to see just how the same chemical gave Matt Murdock super-senses gave you superstrength and (more importantly) flight.'
I give an careless shrug, and decide to mix in a little truth here, in a bid to try and fool her detective senses.
"You seem plenty smart, and I could always use someone in my company who is about a sixth as strong as me."
Now, that wasn't an accurate statement (truthfully, while I knew that I was stronger than Jessica by quite a margin, I had absolutely no idea just how large that margin actually was so far all I knew a sixth was actually the true scale) but that didn't matter as I had said it solely to rile her up.
"A sixth?" she asked irritated, at which I gave the most nonchalant expression I could get to form on my face.
"Eh, somewhere about there, if not a bit weaker."
"I'm not weak." Jessica nearly growls, and it's honestly almost adorable coming from such a little women like her.
Letting a grin cross my face, I cross my arms in front of my broad chest, lifting my chin in challenge.
"Prove it. I propose an arm-wrestling contest, and here's the wager; if I win, then you come work for me, with a salary of about what you're holding there each month. In the extremely unlikely event of you winning, I'll give you ten times of what you stole tonight and never bother you again."
My challenge, combined with the promise of a lot of money and all of the alcohol already in her system, has her quickly fired up, and she walks over to one of the chess tables, taking a seat and lifting her arm with a confident smirk.
I take a seat across from her, and engulf her tiny hand in my massive one, smirking right back at her.
"Ready? One. Two. Thr-"
"Haha! Suck it!"
Of course she would start pushing before I finished counting.
What amazes me is the fact that she's actually making something of a headway in working my arm towards the marble table top (despite the fact that I'm not even really trying to stop her right now), even though she is not even half my weight.
'Damn, what the hell is in those chemicals? I gotta get me some of that.'
As I'm contemplating that, I can see that Jessica is both grinning at her oncoming victory as well as puzzlement furrowing her brow due to the fact that it's taking her this much effort, as she's getting red in the face and is sweating quite profusely.
Which is when I start pushing back.
Briefly I can see the shock in her eyes when our clenched fist suddenly tip to the other side of the table, but to her credit, even when using roughly a quarter of my strength, she's still not out for the count yet.
Which is amazing, because at this level I'm pretty sure that I could throw around cars.
Still, it's clearly taking a toll out of the lithe woman in front of me, as she's desperately panting in exertion, her entire body trembling with all the effort she'd putting in keeping her fist from touching the table.
So being the sportsmanlike gentlemen that I am…
I turned my strength up a notch.
"SHIT!""
And with those eloquent words, Jessica's fist is slammed straight into the stone table, cracking it across its length as she's nearly thrown to the ground due to my final feat of strength.
Standing up from my seat (and shaking my hand loose, because damn that girl got a grip) I turn my back on the shocked looking Jessica as I slowly walk away, leaving my business card on the table as I do so.
"You start at nine in the morning. Don't be late."
And with those words I'm gone, disappeared into the night.
Fun Fact: Chris Evans turned down an offer to play Captain America, not once, not twice, but three times. Due to his past experiences playing the Human Torch in Marvel's Fantastic Four franchise, Evans knew what it was like to be a part of a high-budget film with less than favourable reception. Eventually Evans agreed to accept the part when he was able to negotiate his contract down to six films instead of the original nine and got over his fears.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
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