Balancer of Books, Purveyor of Logic

Player Name: Jade
Player LJ/DW: jessicainjapan
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Timezone: JST
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Character: Virginia "Pepper" Potts
Series: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Deviance: 1

Age: 35
Gender: Female
Species: Human

Canon Used:

Movie canon. Specifically events from Iron Man 1 and 2 with a dash of just prior to the Avengers film. Only a tiny bit about how she came to be Tony Stark's personal assistant is borrowed from the comics.

Appearance:

At around 5'7", Pepper is tall and slim with the typical fair skin, blue eyes, and freckles that come with the territory of being a redhead. In her day to day life, Pepper generally tries to dress for the occasion. Ranging from business casual to formal, it's not unusual to spot Pepper in a dress suit and heels as she works as Tony Stark's personal assistant. She wears her hair up or down depending on the agenda for the day, and always strives to maintain a sense of practicality in her appearance before anything else.

Psychology:

There are many facets that come together to make up who Pepper Potts is. The ruling force over all of them is her connection to Tony Stark. Waiting to address anything regarding Tony, though, Pepper is generally a well put-together woman.

When it comes to being grounded in reality, Pepper has the market covered. Even with Tony's usual antics she almost always manages to keep her priorities in order and doesn't allow herself to become too carried away with the flow of super-heroism or fantastical gods coming over for brunch. It's part of what made her such a good assistant to Tony before the incident in Afghanistan and it's a big part of why she was capable of stepping up to the more demanding job of running Stark Industries while Tony figured himself out. What comes with that firm grounding in reality is a solid foundation that Pepper can count on when things go crazy. When it comes to Tony being in danger, it can still be overwhelming, but it doesn't leave her (completely) helpless. Her matter-of-fact ways and habitual organization keep her on track and getting done what must be done.

In somewhat opposition to her usual practicality, Pepper is a hopeless romantic. She really enjoys hearing about happy endings and of love finding a way through even the most persistent of obstacles. Privately, she jokes with her friends that it’s why she’s able to put up with Tony and his egomania. Even through all the craziness he's put her through, because of her beliefs, she knows that things between them can work if they both keep trying. She also enjoys acting as a personal cheerleader with her friends, and she’s always careful to pay attention to what’s going on in their lives and who the special people to them are. In conjunction with the hopeless romantic side of Pepper is a very sentimental view of the world. When Tony wanted his old, miniaturized arc reactor scrapped, she took steps to have it preserved. It's little things like that -- recognizing what should, in her mind, be special to people, that allows Pepper to be a genuinely caring person.

Pepper's punctuality and organizational skills come with the image Pepper has striven to make for herself. She tries to be the unflappable business woman at all times, and she actually enjoys the ins and outs of running a business (or Tony's life, half the time). Pepper is perfectly fine with staying behind the scenes to get those jobs done, preferring to let Tony be the only one eager to flaunt his existence to the world. She also has adapted well to maintaining professionalism and networking – all things that were very important to her job before as an assistant and to her work now. That isn't to say that she enjoys the stress she had to cope with of trying to keep Stark Industries running while Tony dealt with the ill effects of his arc reactor's core. Pepper is as human as anyone and she has her breaking point. When too much stress and worry is piled on her, she doesn't have time for anyone else -- especially not herself. She becomes irritable, prone to crying (out of sight if she can manage it), and on the edge of being a nervous wreck.

Though she prefers running things from the background, Pepper isn't afraid to speak up for what she believes in. Pepper usually knows where she stands on issues and remains loyal to them to a fault, even if it means standing up to the people she loves. She is a genuinely caring person, and she can’t stand idly by if someone is doing something that might hurt them. She won't sugar coat things when something has gone that far, and if she still can't do anything to remedy what's happening, she has to completely remove herself from the situation. She can't handle watching things fall about for anyone she cares about. It’s part of what makes her such a great friend, though, even if it causes her a lot of grief at the time.

Pepper deals with stress by staying grounded, but also by exercising her more sarcastic side. She falls back on a dry comeback whenever she feels in over her head, whether it be from stress piling up or just an uncomfortable situation. It’s her armor and her weapon in the sometimes cut-throat world of business and she embraces it fully, even using that same dry sense of humor to tease her friends and acquaintances.

Stress comes from many places, but most of Pepper’s stems from her fears. There are a lot of things to be afraid of in a world just discovering that it’s not alone in the universe. Pepper tries to keep a cool head on her shoulders about gods and monster and aliens, but the idea of something unknown lurking out there somewhere, ready to strike at any moment still unnerves her. She can’t prepare for an unknown like that as much as she tries, and every time she sees news reels about anything regarding that, she can’t ward off the icy prickle of dread that next time, she’s going to be in the middle of the fight with no way to defend herself.

Which brings us, at last, straight to Tony. She has friends, she has a job she loves (now that Tony is actually taking some of the stress and pressure off of her), and she has no end to the opportunities cropping up in her life now, but she still feels irrevocably like Tony is all she has in this world. They’ve worked together and so closely for so long that she can’t actually picture what she would do without him there. She’s sure she would go on – she’s strong enough for that – but she’s not sure how long it would take to push past that kind of pain.

Tony is one of Pepper’s biggest weaknesses (bigger even than simply being human). If he was in danger and she could do something about it, she would push past all of her fears to go to his rescue in what ways she could. She knows in most of the situations that he gets himself into that it’s stupid of her to even think she could help, but she also knows that the day isn’t saved by only superheroes.

Fun fact! Pepper is majorly squicked out by slimy or otherwise gross things. She's very girly in that regard. If she has to, she'll deal with it, but when she's finished (or during dealing with it, actually), she's going to flail and be mortified.

Other Skills/Abilities:

Pepper just has regular human skills and abilities that can be expected of your average personal assistant. She can run in high heels, though, which can be considered a fairly advanced skill.

Other Weaknesses:

Strawberries. It is the only known thing that she is allergic to. On top of that, Pepper has only average strength and agility. She's better at defeating you by calling the cops than trying to land a solid punch. Though it has to be said that Pepper does carry a canister of pepper spray, and as long as you aren't super-humanly fast, it's a fair bet that she can get it in your eyes before running for help.

History:

Pepper's life started out tamely enough. She was just a mid level assistant working in the finance department of Stark Industries when she ran across an accounting mistake made by the CEO himself -- Tony Stark. She tried to have it rectified by taking it to her direct superiors first, but... no dice.

Frustrated and determined to do her job to the best of her abilities, Pepper took it upon herself to march straight to Tony Stark to report the error. She wasn't afraid of telling him he was wrong, and she wouldn't be cowed into letting the error slip by just because there might be negative consequences. She knew it was the right thing to do.

She had expected a lot of things might happen (not the least terrifying of which was being fired on the spot for having the gall to tell the CEO he was wrong), but she didn't expect to suddenly be reshuffled into the position of personal assistant to Tony Stark with the instructions to make sure there weren't any future errors (because Tony really couldn't be bothered). At first, she was unsettled by the change, but soon Pepper discovered that she had almost free reign and that this was a job she was good at. Soon, Pepper was in charge of everything from keeping track of Tony Stark's social security number, to sometimes booting out the occasional floozy Tony brought home for a one night stand. No matter what was required of her, Pepper always strove to do an exceptional job and handle Tony's more irritating quirks with grace and no small amount of her own intelligence.

When Tony was kidnapped after a weapons showcasing in Afghanistan, however, things began to change.

Tony was recovered alive, but he came back to the states a changed man. Shortly after Pepper was approached by an Agent Phil Coulson of the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division (later known as simply S.H.I.E.L.D.) requesting a debriefing, Tony held a press conference to announce that he was shutting down the weapons division of Stark Industries until he could re-evaluate how the business was handled.

What followed that was a press nightmare for Pepper. She was just as caught off guard as everyone else, but she squared her shoulders against the plummeting stocks and angry phone calls in order to soldier on. Though she wouldn't make too strong a point of it, she was secretly pleased that her boss seemed to be taking a little bit of responsibility in his life.

Whether Tony was maturing as a person or not, Pepper still had to keep up the public face of Stark Industries while he tried to lie low and let the fallout of his decisions blow over. The annual charity ball that Stark Industries sponsored seemed the perfect place to smooth over hurt feelings and simultaneously have some time to herself to relax. Pepper donned a dress that was a little more revealing that her usual fair (but she was trying to relax, so it was okay, right?) and set out to make the best of the evening.

She hadn't expected Tony to decide that the evening was also his chance to get out of the house for a while. She was even more shocked by her boss insisting on dancing with her. She had always admired Tony somewhat, but her practicality insisted that she keep any feelings for him carefully tamped down and out of sight. Forever. Dancing with Tony jumbled up all of that. Flustered, she tried to explain to Tony why it was not harmless to ask her to dance (especially given his reputation as a lady's man), but it didn't really seem to get through to him.

Before anything she thought they would both regret could happen, Tony left to retrieve them drinks. And... didn't come back.

Pepper didn't know whether to be relieved or infuriated or hurt. She settled for a combination of all three and steadfastly went back to work until she found out why Tony had left her after the dance.

START FROM HERE, JADE

Eventually everything came to a head. Pepper teamed up with Agent Coulson in a disastrous attempt to arrest Obadiah, then overloads the main arc reactor at Tony's request to kill Stane and save Tony's life. After all the tumult, Pepper is just happy to be alive and ready for things to die back down when Tony deviates from the cover story constructed by S.H.I.E.L.D. and announced to the world that he is, in fact, Iron Man. This revelation marks the start of an increase in responsibilities and stress on Pepper that continues to build over the next six months.

Though Pepper isn't aware of the reason, Tony becomes increasingly self-destructive and reckless after that point with the discovering that the arc reactor keeping him alive is also slowly poisoning him. She tries her best to cope with the change in him, but when she's named CEO, the pressure on her increased along with her worry about her boss.

Eventually, the stress and Tony's actions became too much for her to handle and Pepper took steps to distance herself from the problem that Tony wouldn't let her fix (or even tell her about). She refused to watch Tony kill himself.

She wouldn't be reconciled with Tony until the expo where he rescued her from self-destructing drones and she finally quit as CEO, relieving herself of all the pressure that had been heaped onto her in recent times.

Pepper and Tony started their relationship after that. Pepper went back to working as Tony's personal assistant/partner and Tony took back control of Stark Industries. Currently they're working on Stark Tower, making the final tweaks before they can install the arc reactor and take the entire structure off the city grid.

Canon Point:

After the end of Iron Man 2, but a few weeks before Agent Coulson arrives with news about the latest threat and the need for the Avengers to assemble.

Reality Description:

Pepper's home base in her reality is in midtown Manhattan where Stark Tower is under construction. Outside of Pepper's current residence, however, there are few things different from our Earth to Pepper's Earth. For one, Norse mythology isn't just mythic. Gods of legend like Thor and Loki exist on another world known as Asgard. When the Frost Giants decided that ice-beaming people into frozen statues was a good plan, Odin and other Asgardians played on Earth's team and drove them back to their icy home world, earning themselves that spot in mythology.

Closer to the present day, Thor would be sent back to Earth to learn his lesson for being a childish warmonger, which in turn would start to make the government agency of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division) a little antsy as they realized that super-powered gods were out there somewhere and could make a mess of the planet with a quarrel or a war that humans would have no way of stopping. In order to avoid being the scrawny kid with asthma and glasses in the playground of the universe, S.H.I.E.L.D. began making weapons from research on the Tesseract.

The Tesseract came originally from Odin's treasure room, but in the 1940's HYDRA, Hitler's research division, was first working to weaponize it. Around that same time, the world's first super hero, Steve Rogers, was turned from a scrawny, weak boy who'd been repeatedly rejected from the army into a super soldier. It was because of Steve's involvement in a battle against HYDRA that the Tesseract ended up in the hands of those at S.H.I.E.L.D..

The German scientist who created the serum for super-soldiers died, but closer to the present day, Dr. Bruce Banner would be working to recreate the effects. His experiments didn't go as planned, though, resulting in the altogether unpleasant ability to turn into the Hulk whenever he became angry.

Pepper's Earth is riddled with actual super powered people, but it also has Tony Stark and his father before him. Tony's genius has pushed technology ahead for her reality, resulting in incredibly powerful exoskeleton suits alongside inventions like the arc reactor, which Tony now plans to put to use as a viable source of green energy that will take the under-construction Stark Tower off the city grid for at least a year.


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