The Marvel Civil War
“Oh, hey! Civil War comes out tomorrow!”
Aria looked up from her comic (Captain America #103), barely processing what Button had said. The comic shop was, technically, closed, but—seeing as Button’s dad owned the shop—Button was typically allowed to let a few friends stay after closing time (so long as they bought something). Aria was almost always that friend, and she almost always bought something old and expensive.
While Aria perused the shelves of comics, picking out some of her favorites (she remembered when some of them were originally printed), Button sat atop the counter, skimming his phone and flipping through whatever comic he happened to have laying around. Even though Button’s main hobby was gaming, he still had room in his heart for the nearly-dead medium of the comic book.
“Hm? Talking about Captain America?” asked Aria. Button nodded. “Huh. I gotta order my tickets. You wanna go with me?” A slightly sinister grin spread across Button’s face as he lowered his phone and closed his comic.
“What, like a date?” he asked, a slight cackle in his voice. “I’m flattered, Aria, but I really just think of us as friends.”
“Hahaha, shaddup, ya little skidmark.” Aria deposited her comic and found another, this one The Invincible Iron Man #2. “I don’t wanna go alone, and I doubt I can convince Sony to come see it with me. Not after I tricked her into watching Deadpool.”
“Deadpool was amazing, though!”
“You know how that girl gets when there’s blood or nudity involved. She gets really Mormon all of a sudden.” Aria stood up straight and tilted her head in a decent imitation of Sonata. “B-b-but Ari! Why are they doing that together?! They're not even married!”
“Seriously? All the murder in that movie and she's concerned about Deadpool and his girlfriend?” asked Button. “That girl has some janky priorities.”
“Well, she passed out when that dude splattered against the billboard, so…” Aria shrugged, then pulled out her phone to order her tickets. “So? You coming or not? Let me know now so I can order.”
“Sure, I'm game. Gotta lend my support to the team, right?” said Button. Aria nodded.
“The more to cheer on Cap, the better,” she said. As she was putting in her credit card information for the tickets, Button struggled to wrap his head around his friend’s statement.
“Cap? What are you talking about?” demanded Button. “Team Stark, man.”
“Stark?! You're supporting that loser? Figures. Tony’s team is nothing but scrubs.”
“Uh, hello? Black Widow, Spider-Man, Vision, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange are not scrubs!” Button rolled up his sleeves, preparing to fight Aria to the death if need be.
“Defects, defects, neutralized by Scarlet Witch, scrub, and unconfirmed,” listed Aria, counting off on her fingers. “Meanwhile, my team has Ant-Man, Falcon, Hawkeye, Winter Soldier, and Scarlet Witch. Y’know, the chick that cancels out your strongest hero?”
“Tony wins in the comics,” noted Button.
“These ain't the comics.” Aria quickly began searching the internet for ammo she could use for the coming argument.
“Then your points about Spidey and Natasha defecting don't count, cause they do that in the comics.” Button put on a menacing scowl, cracking his knuckles in mimic of Aria. “And these ain't the comics.”
“Look, we're thinking about this all wrong,” said Aria. “It's not about the team, or even the individual heroes. It's about the cause, and Cap's cause is just and fair.”
If Button wasn't so concerned with proving Aria wrong, he might've dropped dead right there upon hearing what he perceived to be the most ludicrous statement ever uttered in the shop.
“His cause is just? He's protecting an international terrorist!” exclaimed Button. “Cap is showing favoritism because Bucky was his friend, but Tony is being a true hero! Making the difficult choice to protect everyone, not just his friends.”
“By making that choice, he's putting all of the Avengers in danger,” Aria pointed out. “No secret identities for anyone is dangerous.” Button shook his head, both to deny Aria's point and to express his absolute disappointment.
“Untrue. None of the Avengers actually have legitimate alter-egos,” countered Button. He held up six fingers. “Of the six original Avengers, list off their alter-egos.”
“Iron Man is Tony Stark, Cap is Steve Rogers, Hulk is Bruce Banner,” recited Aria. “Hawkeye is Clint something, I never remember, and Widow is Natasha Romanoff. I'll give you Thor, but everyone else has alter-egos.” Button nodded, lowering a finger for Thor.
“Tony literally admitted that he's Iron Man in the first Iron Man.” Button lowered a finger. “Rogers was alive in the forties, so anyone he cared about is already dead or dying. Or a bad guy, in the case of Bucky.” Another finger went down. “Romanoff and Clint were with SHIELD, so their names are probably available to the public already anyway.” Only one finger remained. “And Bruce has no one except Romanoff, and even that's on shaky ground.” Button closed his fist, his point thoroughly made.
“Tony's a prick, though.”
“True, but even a prick is right, sometimes.”
This arguing continued in a similar vein for about twenty minutes, with each point being undermined immediately by increasingly obscure bits of comic book trivia. Eventually, both of their pools of rebuttals drying up.
“Look, we’re making this too complicated,” said Button. “How about we ignore the politics of the war and just focus on strength. Who beats who?” Aria grinned, cracking her knuckles in that way she did when she was sure that she had won.
“Oh, you done goofed, twerp,” said Aria boldly. “Cap beats Iron Man, any day of the week.”
“So untrue! Cap is strong, sure, but Iron Man is freaking Iron Man!” said Button. “Captain America versus the Invincible Iron Man. Invincible Iron Man.”
“Take away the suit and he’s just a rich douchebag with a goatee,” scoffed Aria.
“‘You’re a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.’" quoted Button. "The only Avenger more worthless than Captain America…” Button paused for dramatic effect. “Is Hawkeye.”
“Alright, that’s it!” Aria was furious, and she would take this sort of talk no longer. She held her arm to the side, clenching her hand into a fist. Out of nowhere, a large circle of red, white, and blue metal flew towards her, locking onto her wrist. “If you don’t like Cap, that’s fine, I’ll just hate you silently and behind your back. But you will not, and I mean you will not compare him to Clint!”
She chucked the shield as hard as she could directly at Button’s head. Button rolled to the side, tapping at a hi-tech wristwatch that Aria was positive wasn’t there before. Within seconds, a shiny red and gold metal glove rocketed through the air, crashing through the wall of the shop and latching onto Button’s arm. Piece after piece of metal armor flew onto Button, interlocking to form a suit of armor with a glowing circle in the chest. Finally, a gold helmet wrapped itself around his head. Aria held out her arm, calling her shield back to her wrist.
“You sure you wanna do this, Cap?” asked Button, his voice projected through a speaker in the suit. “Drop the shield before you get hurt, buddy.”
“Oh, I’ll drop the shield. I’ll drop the shield right onto your smug, rich, holier-than-thou face!: Captain Aria threw her shield again, this time bouncing it off of Button Stark’s chest. He stumbled backward a bit as the shield ricocheted back into the Captain’s hands.
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Button held out his palm, a circle of light glowing in the center. A high-pitched ping rang through the air and a bolt of highly compressed energy shot towards Aria. She took the hit to the chest, trying to shake off the stunning pain.
“I have to do this for Bucky, Stark,” said Aria. “I wouldn’t do this if I had any other choice. He’s my friend.” She ran up, jumped high into the air, and launched a punch into Button’s mask, knocking him to the ground.
“So was I,” coughed Button. He fired off his rocket boots and flew at high speed towards Aria, burying his shoulder into her gut. As Aria recovered, Button hovered into the air a few feet above his opponent.
“Last chance, Cap,” huffed Button. “Sign off on the Accord or you’ll have a war on your hands.”
“America’s been winning wars since before I went on ice,” spat Aria. She grabbed her shield and leapt forward, just as Button zoomed down. Their fists met in an epic clash, the beginning of the most epic battle in comic book history.
Adagio practically stomped down the streets in annoyance, bags under her eyes and her fists balled up in preparation of what she would do to Aria when she saw her. Ten minutes prior, at 3:16 AM, Sonata had crawled into Adagio’s bed, pestering the eldest Siren with questions like “Where’s Aria?” and “Did she leave because she hates me?”. Adagio would’ve been content to answer her questions (with “Who cares?” and “Probably, yeah”, respectively), if it weren’t for the fact that it was Aria’s night to do chores. So, as a result, Adagio was forced to sacrifice some of her beauty sleep to drag Aria out of the comic shop, where she always happened to be at this time. As Adagio approached the shop, she saw that the inside was something of a mess.
Shelves had been tipped over, with comic books strewn all over the floor. The cash register had been knocked off of the counter, spilling dollar bills and coins all over the floor. Sitting in the middle of the mayhem and calamity were Aria and Button. Aria held a tall figurine of a man in a blue suit with a stripe of red and white down the middle, and she was slamming it against Button’s action figure of a scarlet and gold armored man of a similar size to Aria’s.
“What the actual hell?” asked Adagio. She pulled out her phone and dialed Aria’s number. A short second later, Aria silently reached into her pocket and pulled out a phone of her own, answering the call and putting it to her ear.
“What do you want, Dag?” asked Aria. “I’m busy.”
“Busy playing with dolls?” said Adagio, any semblance of patience nonexistence in her voice. Aria looked up and out of the front window, locking eyes with Adagio.
“Uh… They’re action figures?” tried Aria. Adagio sighed, shaking her head.
“I’m going home and locking the doors. You can climb in through the window since you’re such a Spider-Man so much.” Before Aria could defend herself, mostly by pointing out that she wasn’t holding a Spider-Man toy, Adagio turned on her heel and walked right back home. Aria looked to Button, who held his toy tightly and lovingly.
“Ceasefire til the movie?” suggested Button.
“Sure, whatever,” Aria agreed. “I need a place to crash for the night.”
As Button got up to call his parents to alert them of the sudden guest, Aria grabbed the Iron Man figure. Gripping its body tightly in her left hand, she used her right to pop the head right off and chuck it clear across the room.
“Screw you, Stark. Team Cap for life.”