Marvel's Villainous Gacha 39 (Patreon)

Lab Forty Seven. The location of Hammer’s power armor program. A hangar in the middle of nowhere, with hundreds of guards, both from the military and their private security forces, carefully watching everyone.

Though, said guards were more careful watching the base than outside. Not a surprise, as he had read some of the progress reports. Apparently, it was not an accident that Hammer Industries was famous for being hacks.

Bored guards and sparse cameras didn’t even slow Michael down. He entered, and soon he was in the server room. His initial aim was to just drop a spike to destroy every single bit of data in the file, but when he started to go through the data, he changed his mind.

The reason. The records of twenty soldiers who had been hospitalized, six of them with serious injuries. The files were hidden, combined with confidentiality requests that had been approved by multiple senatorial committees.

Somehow, the nature of the accidents made it even worse. Michael could understand — not forgive, just understand — if the accidents were some kind of unavoidable or impossible to predict tragedies. But no, each accident had been preceded by multiple warnings from junior scientists or technicians, only to be ignored or overruled by their seniors.

He went over the work of their military technicians. Their work was the only reason they didn’t have multiple deaths.

Somehow, it was made even worse by the fact that the failed tests didn’t even require human pilots. They were the basic servo motor tests and controls, easily done by remote plugs.

He changed his mind. Rather than dropping a spike to destroy all data, he copied all. He had assumed their attempt to kidnap Pepper had been the peak of their disgraceful actions, not the softest example.

The designs were not really useful, but he still took them.

Then, he moved to the thing he really came for. He started manipulating their inventory system, creating an emergency order to fill a truck with certain unopened crates. Crates that had been filled with some of the most expensive computer parts money could buy, half of it impossible to purchase without congressional approval.

Though filling some of the empty space, he even added two CNC machines, each with a price tag just south of ten million, even harder to get his hands on than the processing chips. Even military companies required special approval for every machine.

Luckily, Hammer Industries had those approvals thanks to the senators on their payroll, and their hidden base’s accountability measures were even worse than their work safety measures.

He had thought that Obadiah was incompetent. At least he had to actually steal stuff from him. Hammer’s own workers were loading the truck. Just to add insult to injury, he decided to drive the truck himself, a layer of makeup changing his face while a quick hack created a fake identity.

The biggest challenge was resisting the desire to drop a document highlighting every single mistake they had made while designing their base.

He drove away.

[Feat Achieved! Pull a heist worth than a hundred million dollars

+1x Gold Random Gacha ticket]

“Nice,” he muttered. While it was a touch annoying to get only a gold for such a big heist, it was much better than not receiving any.

[Suppression]

{Elite Skill: You are a master of suppressing yourself, getting rid of your presence, lowering it to that of an ordinary presence or fully concealing all of your energy. You can make a presence that shakes gods into one that doesn’t seem out of place with foliage.}

“I take it back. That’s one amazing reward,” he said. The ability to lower his presence was amazing, especially since it also included his energy. More importantly, just like how Programming combined with Hacking, it combined with Spycraft, allowing him to undersell his capabilities much more easily.

Always welcome.

The exit was clean. He just drove the truck while he drove through the nearby complicated area, with drones changing the color of the truck, and from there, he just drove to a warehouse, the drones emptying the crates using the sewers.

A perfect heist.

However, he didn’t stop there. He started going through the files he had acquired, edited them into a coherent pile, and even attached the full profiles of the senators that had supported them, including the barely concealed payment reports.

Publishing them from his base would have been an unnecessary risk. Luckily, he didn’t have to. Instead, he went for a fancier … yet simpler method.

He sneaked into Hammer Industries’ New York office, and used Justin Hammer’s office computer to publish all the data, all under a new, tacky name.

Lord of Anarchy.

However, he soon met with an unwelcome surprise. His little gift had been erased in seconds. Suddenly, he was glad that he had carefully curated the documents and used Justin’s computer as a vector.

The counter-attacker was good. Better than him. It reminded him of JARVIS, only considerably more aggressive. Michael was reasonably confident that he could defend his base, but outside, he had to build some seriously better computers to defeat them.

Luckily, he didn’t need to actually defeat them. He just needed to retrace the attacker, curious who was going to all that trouble protecting Justin Hammer or the senators behind them.

Before he could pull, he started hearing the approaching enemies. SHIELD agents.

He bit his lips as he continued his counterattack, still limiting himself to Justin’s computer rather than using his own. Obvious involvement of SHIELD agents made his counter-attack unnecessary, but he wanted to look more convincing.

Predictably, it had been tracked to a SHIELD base, though surprisingly, it was Camp Lehigh rather than Triskelion or New York Headquarters, the two most reasonable locations to house their counter-intelligence assets.

But then, there was no guarantee that he had discovered their strongest tool.

Especially since he received no feat as a reward.

A touch disappointing, but not entirely problematic.

He could have disappeared easily, either by dipping down, or just teleporting back, but he wanted to test just how aggressively SHIELD would react. Instead of going to the basement, he went toward the roof, where Justin Hammer’s private helicopter was in place.

Just as SHIELD agents were climbing the stairs, the helicopter was already moving. He changed his direction toward the sea, to make sure there would be no collateral damage.

A good choice. Merely a minute later, he had caught the very distinct sight of several ground-to-air rockets coming from the shore.

He teleported, letting the helicopter explode.

He had received his answer.

SHIELD was very serious in defending Justin Hammer.

To his surprise, he still didn’t get any reward for successfully escaping them. Maybe getting his ride shot in the air didn’t count as success for System.

Difficult to know.

“The question, what I should do with the data,” he said.

He was reasonably sure that the faction that had caught him wasn’t Coulson’s faction. The speed the SHIELD counter-intelligence surprised him, once again confirming his path of physical infiltration.

He could do a few things. He could pass the data to Coulson using a fake identity, but he was reluctant. He wasn’t entirely sure that Coulson was aware of the issue, and passing the data to him might escalate the situation.

He didn’t want to do that, especially since his public persona was linked to Coulson.

He was tempted to try to infiltrate Camp Lehigh, but he decided against it. There was a difference between sneaking into a data backup base with limited confidential information, and one of their core facilities.

“Tempting, but no,” he ultimately decided. With a literal truckload of computer chips and other machines, he had the last piece he needed to leverage his Computer Tinker ability properly.

He returned to his bed, which, for once, was empty because Mary Jane had to fly to Los Angeles to start working on the media company. Jessica went with her just to be safe. Meanwhile, Pepper and Natasha were still out, busy establishing the new company as well as dealing with Stark Industries work while Natasha was passing her work to a team of new assistants.

Luckily, this time Pepper took his advice.

He lay down, falling asleep, when Natasha sent him a message, asking whether he was up for a private celebration with her and Pepper. Was he tired? Somewhat. Was he tired enough to ignore the tempting invitation from two sexy redheads?

Never.

He had just finished setting up a small table, mostly Pepper’s favorite cheeses and wine, though he did made sure to add a couple that Natasha actually liked rather than she claimed to like in her role as Natalie. She was committed to her role to an extreme, impossible to decipher without his unique lie detection trick.

The elevator dinged, and he heard Pepper’s distinctive heels on the floor, though the way she walked was still somewhat dizzy. He wondered what had happened. Natasha calling it a celebration meant that it was something good, but Pepper was not that easy to flap.

“Michael?” Pepper’s voice carried, still dazed. He turned, and saw that Pepper was still in her work clothes, a white blazer and navy dress that balanced perfectly between beautiful and serious.

He immediately poured a glass of wine for her, which was her favorite vintage, and walked. “What happened?” he asked as he passed her the wine.

Pepper opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. She looked like a woman who had rehearsed a speech in the car and had forgotten every word of it upon arrival. She just grabbed the wine, and drank it.

“I’ll translate,” Natasha intervened. “You’re looking at the new CEO of Stark Industries.”

Michael looked at Pepper. “Well deserved. You finally have the official title for the job you had been doing all along,” he said, raised his own glass, and they clinked.

“Running it, yes. But the title was—” Pepper’s voice cracked, and she pressed her fingers to her lips, laughing at herself. “I’m sorry. I’ve been blindsided. Tony is … hasty as always,” she said, exasperated. He was happy to see that while Pepper’s tone still carried some fondness at the mention of Tony’s name, the undertone of longing she had when they first met was completely gone.

A regimen of extraordinary orgasms and playful attention was perfect to get rid of any pesky crush. Tony might have had a chance to change it, but instead of confronting Pepper and revealing his feelings, he chose to dive back into endless partying and womanizing.

His loss.

“What happened?”

“I went to Tony’s office to discuss his latest decision—“

Natasha smirked as she interrupted. “She means she went to bitch-slap Tony because he decided to donate her precious art collection.”

Pepper snorted. “It took ten years for me to curate that collection,” she said. “It’s not like they are worth that much, or Stark Industries is lacking money. It’s just…”

“He didn’t even think about how much time and effort you put into it, because for him, it just exists,” Michael said in a gentle tone and hugged Pepper. She let herself fade into his arms.

While he patted her back, he wondered Tony was actually trying to help him. Was he trying to take some kind of revenge, or didn’t realize that giving away the art collection Pepper had curated was like Pepper throwing away his designs? A personal affront.

Either way, he didn’t care. He was more than happy to enjoy the fruits of Tony’s stupid mistakes.

“Screw his insensitive ass. Tonight is our celebration,” he said. “Did it come with a pay bump?”

“Yes. Equity restructuring, board seat, compensation package that made my eyes water,” she muttered, though he could see that she didn’t care about those that much. She was a true workaholic with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.

“Good, let’s celebrate,” he said as he tilted her chin up and kissed her, tasting salt and lipstick and the particular sweetness of vindication. She kissed him back with an urgency that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with needing to be held by someone who understood what this meant.

Over Pepper’s shoulder, Natasha watched them. The smirk had softened into something warmer, tender. To reward her, he grabbed her arm and pulled her closer. As usual, she melted into his body, though she also rubbed Pepper’s back.

“It might have some implications for Jane’s company. Investing in it as the official CEO might be —“

“Tomorrow,” he said.

“But, it’s important to Jane—“

“I’ll cover the full funding. Not really important,” he said. With banks allowing to get loans using his classic cars as collateral, he had no immediate problems with cash, especially since he could use the cash he stole from Kingpin to buy them before repairing, creating a very easy money laundering opportunity.

She opened her mouth to argue, but he kissed her again. Not gently. The kind of kiss that interrupted business strategy and replaced it with something considerably less organized.

Pepper made a sound of protest, which dissolved into sexy surrender.

“Or, we can discuss tomorrow,” Pepper breathed dazedly when he released her and took a step back, holding Natasha to stay upright.

“Much better,” he said as he gestured to the small table. “I’m sure you have forgotten to eat. Let’s have a quick bite.”

They sat. Pepper started nibbling her favorite smoked salmon appetizer with some Mimolette, a rare French cheese only she loved, so he made sure to always stock some.

Small details mattered when it came to happy relationships, even nontraditional ones. They chatted happily for a while, interseded only by occasional kisses, alternating between Pepper and Natasha, more than happy with the situation.

Though, he could see that Natasha was more subdued after her talk with Clint. He could understand where she was coming from. She believed that her situation was doomed once she revealed her duplicity.

Interestingly, rather than trying to seduce him and turn herself into a part of his life, she was just distancing herself slightly, as if she were a tragic heroine doomed to die alone. He decided not to nip that in the bud, as mental distancing could kill what they were building more easily than physical distance.

Technically, it would risk revealing his hand more than he was prepared, but only by a relatively small margin … and Natasha was worth the risk even if the situation was more dangerous.

Natasha’s professionalism gave him a safer angle. Even now, she was eating the snacks that Natalie supposed to like rather than she actually enjoyed. He put Pepper’s absence to good use, and pushed it toward her. “Here, I prepared this for you,” he said. “Don’t let it go to waste.”

“I don’t really like soft cheeses, or raspberries,” she said smoothly.

He shrugged. “Of course you do,” he declared with casual certainty. “I just don’t understand why you insist that you insist otherwise.”

The widening of her eyes was just beautiful. It was a subtle thing, and coming from her, it counted as full-blown panic.

He grabbed her hand and squeezed. “I don’t know why you are denying yourself the food you enjoy. Is it a habit from your modeling days?” he asked.

Natasha paused. “Something like that. Sometimes, in my job, I have to act differently than I otherwise would,” she said.

He reached and held her hand, a gentle, chaste touch. “You don’t have to hide your true self around me,” he said. Then, he smirked. “It’s not like you’re very successful.”

“Oh, really?” she asked, playful. “What else do you know about me, then?”

He chuckled as he took a step forward and hugged her from behind. She melted against his chest. “I know that the kinky stuff is not your favorite. You enjoy it, but what you crave is cuddling.” His arms tightened, feeling her tremble in surprise. “You prefer your coffee with enough cream and sugar to qualify it as a dessert, but you insist on drinking it black. You have a tendency to pull back when you are having fun, as if for some reason, it could end the next second.”

The more he spoke, the more she tensed, though it was only something he could detect. “Interesting, what’s next? My name is a lie?”

“Probably,” he said, and she tensed even more. “You won’t be the first model that decided to change her name to something catchier,” he continued, then kissed her. “Also, why would I care about something as silly as a name. I know you, I like you. I enjoy spending time with you, and you enjoy spending time with me.”

She trembled in his arms, but this time, it was not her usual subtle reaction. She actually trembled. “That simple, huh?” she asked.

“It’s that simple,” he said, and kissed her. “Life is short. I could have died when a moron hero hit me and sent me to hospital for a week; or when Stane’s attacks took half of my leg. All that matters is to be happy in our short time, and make people we care about just as happy.”

“Thats it, huh?” she replied, and kissed him. It was a beautiful kiss. One that didn’t feel like Natalie, but Natasha … or whatever her true name was, which didn’t matter.

Then, the night got even better when Pepper walked back, wearing a beautiful black nightie that looked criminal on her body, ready for her celebration. “Now, let’s go enjoy ourselves by screwing the new CEO of Stark Industries until she loses her ability to walk. What do you think?” he asked.

Her smile had nothing to do with the cold and controlled beauty of Natalie. It was a perfect combination of sexy and sharp, with just a hint of danger. “That sounds like a challenge,” she said.

“Well, only if you like losing,” he whispered back.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Losing? To you?"

"I've had more practice with her."

"Technique is everything,” she responded.

It was going to be a fun celebration.