Mutants of Mars

"This is the Keep to vessel. You're entering into Sol territory. Identify yourselves."

Walt pressed the button for the coms. "Keep, this is the Eclector and it's Captain Walter Stark and crew. We're based out of and returning to Terra from the Shi'ar Empire and points beyond. Requesting permission to approach Planet Arakko?"

The voice on the other end sounds much more friendly saying, "Received and recognized, Captain Stark. Sending vector approach coordinates now. Welcome home, Eclector."

"Wow," Gwen said as Mars drew closer. "It's crazy to think this world is already out this far... humans on Mars..."

Jubilee and Jen laughed. "We just returned from hoping around the Universe and the other realms and you're excited about Mars?"

Gwen shrugged. "Well... I just... I dunno..."

Walt smiled and patted Gwen's arm. "Hey, don't mind them. They're just funning you. I know how you feel. I been to so many places on my adventures... but that first time seeing, Mars? It's always a special feeling. They're excited too."

Jubilee nodded. "It's just good to be coming home! Also correction. It ain't any old humans that made it to Mars!"

Walt chuckled and nodded. "Yep! Planet Mars, or more properly the planet Arakko, is a second Mutant home now. Small maybe but it's a start... smart really. A bit more terraforming and Krakoa seeding and in the event Earth goes nutso y'all can say "so long and thanks for all the fish" like the dolphins." They chuckle with him. "Mutants finally one upped the non-mutants. Mars is considered the official representative of the solar system as far as the universal powers that be are concerned... on paper at least."

Jen nodded. "Yes. Legally speaking it was quite a victory for Mutants! The Earth is much greater significantly with population, governments, resources, businesses and the like... but as far as the big galactic empires are concerned Mars is the capital of the solar system and that means any interstellar activity, visitors and businesses have to deal in part with the Mutants, Krakoa and S. W. O. R. D. first before the Earth."

Jubilee nodded but sighed. "It was supposed to help us get normal humans to ease off Mutant tensions by leveling the field a bit in importance... but in practice it's been a mixed bag. Anti-Mutant rhetoric and group membership has died down some but the militant groups have just doubled down on the hate mongering, like you saw."

Linda shrugged. "You know what they say. The most abundant resource in the universe is stupidity."

"And they're right," Shocket added. "Morons and nonsense everywhere. Course all laid in for Arakko approach."

Walt nodded. "Good. The Eclector...I really need to think up a new name for her... anyway she is too big to keep dragging to earth over and over again without raising tons of alarms. We'll leave her here, likely orbiting one of the moons, and use one of the M-Class ships as a shuttle of sorts though we can also use Krakoa link. We'll use Yondu's ship which means..."

"Seriously?"

Walt nodded. "Seriously." He waved to the second best M-Class ship in the Eclector hangers. "It's all yours as well as the payment we agreed upon. You've both been great." He smiled at Shocket and Linda. "I couldn't have done it without you two. You've been great while the others have been getting used to being spacers... and I am sorry I wasn't as good to you as I would have liked to be. I hope you can forgive me for being a tad underhanded."

Shocket snorted and shook her head when Linda elbowed her. "Hey... knock that off, alright? Truth is you were just being smart. I wasn't going into our meeting in good faith either. Was gonna try to blast you when your back was turned and try to take the ship... the truth is..." Shocket sighed. "Things worked well between us... you probably were more fair with me than I would have been with you... and so... aww geez, I ain't good at this junk, Linda! You do it!"

Linda smiled and patted her shoulder. "She's trying to say she liked working with you." She smiled at Walt and offered her hand. Walt knelt down and took it and she surprised him by hugging him. "We both did. Because you treated us like friends. We... haven't had a lot of practice at that and haven't always been treated well so it was nice."

Walt smiled sadly hearing that. He hently traced Linda's most distinctive feature, aside from being a duck, a scar that ran down her face from over one eye than down and across under her nose and over and around her bill. "I'm sorry to hear that. You girls deserve better. I wish I had been a better friend to you." He hugged her with one arm.

Shocket sighed and sidled closer. "Aww, fuck it. I told you to knock that shit off..." She reached out and touched his other shoulder giving it an awkward pat and when Walt reached out his other arm she slowly stepped into it too. "You did good for a hairless ape..." Walt started stroking her head the way she liked being patted. "Really good considering... so... I uh, well we were thinking... since everything turned out ok and we made a profit... why break up a team?"

Walt blinked and Linda laughed. "What she means is let's keep working together... and be friends!"

"Why'd you have to add that last part?" Shocket half-heartedly grumbled but didn't refute it.

Walt nodded and hugged them both a little tighter. "Thank you... if you're both sure I'd really like that myself!"

Shocket tried to play it cool but her tail swished happily making Linda roll her eyes. "Yeah, well we don't got nothing better to do right now so maybe we can earn a few more credits..."

Linda elbowed her sister. "What she means is we want to keep working for you. Go on... tell the Captain properly! That's the deal we made each other-"

Walt hugged them both. "Nah. That's good enough for me! Thank you both!"

Linda sighed and looked at Shocket who rolled her eyes... but started patting Walt's head like he always did for her. "Yeah... let's stick together. Good partners are kinda of hard to find sometimes."

(("I hate to interrupt, Sir. But you have many things to do today including meeting with the Sovereign of Arakko and it's Council followed by formally taking control of Stark Unlimited and-"))

"Yes, Friday," He nodded letting go of the girls. "Let's go help save the day..."

"And ruin some bad guys day..." Linda said.

"And make a profit!" Shocket said with a smile.

"You're sure about this?" Ororo asked.

Walt and Jubilee nodded along with Jen who handed her their proposal. "The information my detectives picked up confirm it. This man in particular was trying to buy out Stark Unlimited. He is going by "Feilong" but his real name is Kelvin Heng. He's a part of Orchis and has a bone to pick with mutants and particularly the ones of Krakoa and Arakko. Making a long story short, a some what brilliant young scientist and businessman, he was saddled with crap parents and lost his first fortune to them. He rose back up though especially putting everything in to Martian terraforming even going so far as to mutate himself further with cosmic radiation exposure enhancement. And then..."

Ororo nodded. "During the Hellfire Gala we unveiled our terraforming with Krakoa. It didn't take decades. We beat him to the punch as it were."

Walt nodded sadly. "Afraid so... and he took the destruction of yet another dream badly. He became a self hating mutate who loathes other mutants and joined the other team. I'm trying to figure out if he was partly behind Tony's disappearance or not but my guts saying "no", he just benefited from it. He's been buying up Stark Unlimited for Orchis. After Tony's death he started smearing his name and trying to drive the price down... but he messed up."

Walt shows her another picture of a young man. "Zhong Wei. Another brilliant young scientist who's dreams didn't quite go as planned. When A.I.M. initially approached him trying to apuire his research however he denied them fearing what they'd do with it. He took a big loss but impressed Tony with his morals and ideals. Enough that Tony tried to help him and left him a large amount of SU, enough stock in Stark Unlimited to trigger a shareholder rights plan against a hostile takeover. Unfortunately he killed Zhong. After he planned to reintroduce Zhong's shares into the market, "Feilong" would try to acquire the company in order to use Stark's technology for the benefit of the pro-human organization Orchis. Specifically for these. Stark Sentinels and..."

Storm looked at the blue prints and her eyes widened in surprise. "But that's like-"

"My old plans."

Walt nodded and looked up as Magneto joined them. "Good to see you, Eric and you're not wrong. It's a much more modern version of the same idea. He would have turned the moon Phobos into a sort of modern Asteroid M with Stark and Sentinel technology."

Eric nodded and smiled seating himself. "An act of war."

Walt nodded but shrugged. "I see it the same way... but ultimately an act that's been averted... for now. I had been buying shares of Stark myself for my own reasons. It's been a bit of competition between us. I had already met with Zheng myself. But I didn't want to buy his shares."

Ororo smiled. "You wanted him to keep them and work with him."

Walt nodded. "So I didn't buy them... but he did sign them over to me anyway. In the event anything happened to him they'd become mine. Feilong didn't know this and had him murdered. He doomed himself which immediately raised Friday's and my hard working detectives suspicions. It became easy once they knew who to look at. Now the tricky parts..." he looked at Jen.

She sighed but nodded. "Technically you're not doing overtly illegal like he has but you are forming a conspiracy that's about to get... grey. But I'm in... I don't want to know any particulars though so I think I'll just listen to some music and take in the view!" She-Hulk pulls out some ear buds and looks out the window at terraformed Mars humming as he and Jubilee grin.

Eric and Ororo smile too. "That's a good lawyer for you."

Walt nodded. "She's great! Alright now that I now own the company that he was going to use to do these things... let's do them first for our benefit! The Keep is great and all but having a orbital platform with it's own energy plant is a great idea! We can take it even further! It can become a interplanetary relay station for Arakko itself. I'd like for Arakko to lease the asteroid like moon of Phobos to Stark Unlimited and myself in perpetuity with the exception that if anything happens to me the rights then turn back over to the Planet of Arakko."

Ororo blinks but smiles as Eric then laughs, "You're offering to build us a floating powerplant and relay station for our benefit?"

Walt shrugged. "And my own profit too. I estimate as Earth's galactic importance increases we'll see all kinds of trade start coming in. Even a fraction of a percentage of that will be extremely profitable for the tiny price of constructing a small orbital station. It also makes good PR as "non-mutants" can work and love there without upsetting the "mutant" population of the planet. It's the kind of dream project we've all been hoping for. It'll take the wind out of the sails of the mutant hating groups and make them look even more foolish about all their ranting and raving about you all being here. That's the legal part..."

Eric grinned. "And the "not so legal part" is coming up next?"

Walt nodded. "I have to do some press conference stuff and share holders meetings and take the reigns of SU. This Feilong will likely attend. I want X-Force to 'extradite' the sunovabitch and interrogate the bastard." He wasn't smiling anymore. "We got a real chance to find out who Orchis is, who's a member and who's pulling strings... I recently fought some of the militant Church of Humanity along with, Jubilee and her friends. I hate these guys. That's the conspiracy part."

Jubilee nodded. "It's not illegal but it's super grey... but I agree with Walt. They're bad guys. They're even killing normal humans like this Mr Wei just because it might get them a step closer to their goal of coming after us?! That's twisted! They need to be stopped!"

Walt nodded. "Technically Shield or someone else probably has the legal right. I probably should be taking to Brand about this up on the Keep. It'd get reffered to someone from some department. Someone who most likely ain't a mutant... but I'm offering to help yall set this bastard up and maybe use him to find out the others..."

Ororo the Sovereign and Eric the council member look at each other and nod. "We're in and can probably make the Council of Arakko see the reason in this plan too," Storm said. "Thank you for this, Walter."

Magneto nodded and even laid a hand on Walt's shoulder. "You've just shown again why you were trusted with 'Mutant' status. The Krakoa Council chose wisely in granting you that honor. You likely aren't keen on hearing me say this... but thank you for this, Walter. You're a good friend to mutants."

Walt shrugged. "Doesn't bother me at all, Eric. I'd feel the same no matter who it applied too. Mutant, non mutants, purple three headed space people... folks like these and their hate mongering needs to be stopped. Especially when the violence becomes directed at those they supposedly want to 'protect' or 'save' with their ignorant hate." He thought about the Shield with the stars and stripes... about the Spider-Man mask. He knew Eric and Storm would both understand. "Hate doesn't save people. It hurts them. Hate doesn't protect anyone. It crushes them. All of the little ones suffer from it. No matter what powers they do or don't have or what makes them different or special." He shook his head. "I won't disagree with your past ideologies. That's the past. That's not important. Helping those people? That's where my loyalties lie. I'm far from perfect but they deserve all the help I can give them. So that's the side I choose to be on. I don't know if that makes it right or wrong but I hope it helps. Because that's all I can do. Understand?"

Eric nodded. "I do... and I can respect that."

Ororo nods. "Then let us work hard to make that difference together!"

[Walter Stark Penny Polendina F.R.I.D.A.Y Neopolitan Pyrrha Nikos Nora Valkyrie Yang Xiao Long Blake Belladonna Kali Belladonna Sienna Khan Willow Schnee Glynda Goodwitch Zwei Ahnassi Lifts-Her-Tail Senko Sayoko Shinozaki Roberta Cisneros Haruna Sasha Blouse Ilulu Rachel "Raven" Roth Manami "La Brava" Aiba Tsuyu "Froppy" Asui Haruhime Sanjouno Anastasia "The Baroness" Cisarovna/DeCobray Demona Mystique Pirotess Lydia Aela the Huntress Serana Mission Vao Curie Ada PAM KL-E-O Merida Gwen "Gwenom" Stacy Jubilation "Jubilee" Lee and Jennifer "She-Hulk" Walters

Will Return In

Stark Unlimited

Coming Soon]