Chapter 303: Arc Ten. Chapter Two-Hundred Ninety-Five. Multiheaded Snake

Peter called Pepper and let her know about Tony. What surprised him though was that Pepper had already been working on a package to deal with Tony's attempt on his life and the technology he had developed for the government.

The result was that the contracts with Stark Enterprises were being shredded. Tony had signed the new contracts with a smile, even after he read that a certain lawyer had put in non-compete clauses, and part of that was developing technologies to directly impact Peter as well as Parker Inc and AIM.

What surprised Peter though was that it was Pepper's idea. He was going to ask exactly what was wrong, but the glare and the waves of anger rolling from her gave him a big enough clue. Tony had told her about Maya.

After seeing the first list Peter had emailed her after he started using nanotech, she did digging of her own, and with her own list being much more extensive, she had finally lost all patience with Tony. Some of the things he had been doing were borderline illegal but it was the emotional toll he was extracting. 

Several up and coming scientists, not just Killian, had been ruined, and with Tony's influence, he didn't even have to blacklist them. Simply mocking them had put a target on their backs. Tony was irresponsible but influential, and more often than not, a simple ‘that's stupid’ from Tony killed an idea in its tracks, and nobody touched it. There were more names on the list than just Reed Richards and Quentin Beck, and it was a long list.

Pepper had spent her career watching Tony destroy others, thoughtlessly and without a care. There were broken scientists all over the world, and when he had targeted Peter, she finally had enough. She had taken one look at Peter and realised his potential. He was young, handsome, intelligent, a bit irresponsible, but most of all reminded her of Tony. 

The biggest difference was he cared, even when she slept with him and used him to get back at Tony, he just nodded and accepted it. It wasn’t naive stupidity, it was an actual effort to make amends and move forwards. She had realised at that moment that while Tony tried his best, he cared about himself more than anyone else and with that realisation, Pepper knew she needed to move on.

Taking their personal relationship out of the equation, she had seen a future with Tony and Peter making the world a better place. Mentor and Protege, and they both fucked it up completely. Two stupid male egos who started a feud over a woman. It was true that it was her, but she had hoped they would get over it.

Pepper knew she hadn’t helped matters, but she tried to smooth things over. A project both would see the benefit of a partnership, but once more stupid male egos collided and they went back to fighting. It snowballed until it reached its peak and he made a choice. Tony had chosen Maya over her, and while stupid male egos could be fragile things, Pepper believed in another saying. Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.

She found Tony bending Maya over his desk, the same desk Pepper had been bent over the week before. He had apologised for Jocasta, taken her to her favourite restaurant and reminded her why she had fallen for him in the first place. Tony was kind to those he cared about but ultimately ruthless and unsympathetic to those he didn’t. He was trying to prove he cared for her but it had all been done before. The apology, the restaurant and finally the sex. It was textbook Tony, and she had fallen for it. He had even apologised for his attitude towards Peter, and she gave him one last chance, and he blew it. Right into Maya. 

Pepper knew there were no condoms in that desk, they used the last one, and as she watched him use a scented tissue to wipe himself, and then Maya, she knew he was unprotected. The thought of how many others crossed her mind, and she booked a medical exam with Liv, sighing in relief as everything came back negative. She was not happy though, after a conversation with Tony, that Maya’s had not. She held her tongue, and the urge to slap him, he was no longer her concern and it would be strictly business from then on.

She had even considered joining Peter’s little group, one of nine, but the idea struck a nerve. She had enough of Tony, and while Peter cared, she wanted to be selfish. She didn’t want to be one of nine. She wanted someone who loved her and her alone. Poly might be for some, but she preferred her men faithful.

Instead, she would help guide his business, make him a global name, even bigger than Tony, who stood on his father's shoulders, but she had learned not to mix business with pleasure. Unknown to Peter, he had done her a favour. Matt Murdoch lay in the bed next to her, the sheet barely covering his muscular back, sure the scars were a bit worrying but he was blind, scars were just one of the many consequences of that, or so he had said. She made sure this time, and as Matt rolled over in bed, Pepper watched the muscles of his back relax. 

His fling with his secretary had been very publicly declared over. Matt had explained that he had begun to see Karen before Elektra showed up, took their training the wrong way and split up with him, via a shouting match in the office. Elektra had been seeing Felicia, which just made Pepper's head hurt, but Matt had already told her about Karen. It devolved into a mess and Matt, not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings, had split things off with both. He wasn’t a cheater and admitted his mistake. 

He also explained everything to Pepper, which she took as a good sign and after a late night at the office, a few glasses of wine celebrating a very large win against the Government's crazy scheme to isolate Peter, had let Matt show him that while he was blind, he really didn't need to see where to touch, kiss, or anything else. 

As he lay sleeping in her apartment, she smiled and closed her own eyes as well. While Matt was Peter's lawyer, he wasn't on retainer to AIM, Pepper had already begun to assemble a full-time legal team. This would work, she would make it work. Life was finally back on track, with no super-powered bullshit to spoil it this time.

Not that Matt hadn’t done his best, and every lawsuit and injunction sent against Parker Inc and AIM had been dismissed, as well as a few select countersuits. The dollar signs were slowly ticking up, as Matt and Pepper both sued and settled, making sure AIM and Peter came out of this smelling like roses, and while their own fees were hefty, and would eventually come out of Peter's profits, she made sure everyone would be left happy.

It had all come down to the use of illegally obtained alien technology, and in the end, came down to the Government's illegal attempts to seize that technology for themselves.

With Peter patenting several symbiote cell treatments, and the Stacy formula the US government, championed by Senator Gideon Malik, had argued that private firms had no right to military-grade technology unless it was sanctioned by the government. So they used the Sentinel attacks to highlight that fact.

As well as the illegal seizure of technology, the illegal detainment of Ivan and Cindy, the trespassing on private property, the illegal warrants for Peter, and the illegal warrants for AIM and Parker Inc, Pepper and Matt tied everything into one giant headache.

There were three documents sent back. One, an NDA that nothing happened. Two, an affidavit stating that Pepper and her legal team would stop aggressively pursuing the situation, and the third was a check, with a lot of zeros that Pepper told Peter to accept with no argument. When the government rolled over it did so for its own benefit, and it was wise to not poke the sleeping giant.

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Stark was being used as an example. His Iron Legion was under government review and was operating with Senatorial blessing, but Oscorp, Hammer and now Parker Inc and AIM weren't. They had followed the letter of the law, but with new Augment and Enhanced rules, the laws were changing.

It wasn't difficult to guess the government wanted the Stacy formula and its own branch of symbiote soldiers. The CLS had been taken, much to Peter's annoyance, and while he had been wrong, Pepper even sent counter suits to stop the control and power dampening collars from being made using his stolen technology. Working for Tony and having to fight off similar suits was as easy as breathing for her and in the following weeks, each case was dropped, with no apology.

Tony however had taken the loss better than anyone expected. He had been called before the board of Stark Industries, hung his head and apologised, and in a surprise move, resigned.

It came with strings though. Starktech would cease to exist and was renamed Cybertek, still manufacturing weapons for the government and another one of its unofficial branches. He gave up Extremis, and he only wanted two things.

He got his name and registered Stark Solutions the very next day, and immunity for Jocasta and Vision. Nobody was touching them on his watch, Peter could deal with Friday on his own, and as he watched Pepper take not just his own lawsuits but the government apart with graceful legal violence he knew she would get a better deal. 

The military got its hands on the Iron Man suit, but he didn’t care. A normal manufacturing plant could produce up to the mark twenty-five with no issue, but the more advanced suits used very heavily patented metal alloys, and only he could make them. They could have a fleet of the Warmachine, it was outdated and couldn’t touch what he had planned.

Extremis was also on their list, but Tony and Maya didn’t care. The method used by Gwen to stabilise it required a healthy supply of Peters symbiote cells, and as he doubted Peter would be giving the government anything other than the finger, it was time to move and start fresh. Be a better person for Maya, be a good father, something he had never had.

Now that the personal issues had been dealt with, it was the government's turn. Paperwork was filed, and suits settled both in and out of court Peter was then left with a singular problem. Pepper had arranged a meeting, Gideon Malik wanted to see him, to arrange for a senatorial hearing.

That would be an issue, and Peter reached out to find Emma. He needed the Stone, as he really didn’t want to touch Malik to read his mind.

Emma was happy to return it, “I will explain later,” was all she said, “it is amazing, but it is also too much,” before she shook her head and walked away. 

Peter could understand. To him, it enhanced his telepathic abilities, and he wasn't a natural. To someone like Emma, or Charles the Stone would allow her to do anything. Taking over and ruling a country would be easy. The Stone was dangerous, and it needed to be taken off the board. Right after he dealt with a few problems.

Peter walked into the Senator's office with a huge smile on his face and as he stared at the portly older gentleman he immediately unleashed his full powers onto him,

“Nice to see you, Senator. So, tell me about Cheyenne Mountain.”

In less than half an hour Peter knew it was just the command centre, and whatever was being used to control the sentinels was located somewhere else. Malik had knowledge of the program but not the specifics. For that, Peter would have to find Trask, and that was proving difficult.

He also knew that rat bastard was Hydra, and it was him that wiped the servers at Shield clean. It was just an unfortunate side effect that he also cleaned Venom's file as well, and all the evidence linking Peter to Venom had gone with it. 

There were people who knew about his alter ego, but there was nothing written down, no cell samples, no recordings and they needed to make sure they had him. Proving Peter was actually Venom gave them the ammo they needed to shut him down for good, and Peter knew it wasn't a jail cell he was facing, it was a lab. Malik had visions of Hydra Super Soldiers, each with a perfect copy of his abilities, and if Peter knew he could get away with it, he would have crushed the man there and then.

He had systematically targeted every one of Peter's allies. Using their pasts against them, and removing his support. He just hadn't counted on a very enthusiastic Pepper and a very competent legal team. Matt would send a bill, but Peter knew he deserved more. Maybe a folding adamantium walking cane, Matt did love his billy clubs.

Peter walked from the office, cursing he couldn't just give the bastard an aneurysm, but he had already filed paperwork. Peter, Parker Inc, and AIM would face the same senatorial hearing that Stark had. Even if he killed Malik it would still go ahead.

The other problem Peter had was that the manufacturing process for the Sentinels was at Cheyenne mountain. Trask Industries had produced a super Sentinel, capable of assembling each component itself, and the master mould was at the base, allowing them to deploy as many Sentinels as they had materials for. 

Liv's road trip was definitely on the books, as the machine needed to be taken care of. It had been quiet, and according to Coulson and what he gleaned from Malik they had shut it down, but Peter knew from experience that rogue AI didn't just let itself be shut down, and he needed to go and make sure.

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