Tony and Bruce sat in silence in the luxuriously-upholstered seats of the Quinjet. "Since we have some time, maybe you'll finally tell me about this girl that you're so intent on recruiting?" Bruce suggested. Tony pondered for a while.
"She's got a great accent," he said finally.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Posh, cut-glass, Oxbridge precision right there. Oh, and she's pretty heavy into Latin aphorisms. And sometimes she leaves people at the altar." Tony seemed to consider this enough information. Bruce didn't.
"Common Latin aphorisms, or really esoteric, pedantic ones?" Because that was, of course, the most important question to ask.
"Depends on how irritating she's feeling. Watch, she'll drive you crazy within days."
"If I can keep the Other Guy from coming out and killing you on a daily basis, I think I can handle a little Latin."
Tony grinned, winked, and settled back in seat, the image of relaxation. But there was a tension in his hands, and furrow in his brow, that had lingered stubbornly since the explosion of the arc reactor.
One day earlier
The last 24 hours had been flurries of activity interspersed with long periods of brooding, during which Tony sequestered himself deep in his workshop, responding only to offers of Boba tea from Pepper (much to Bruce's disgust).
Now, he emerged from one of his exiles, tossed Bruce a duffle bag, and told him to pack for London.
There are very few ways to respond to that. One can either throw the duffle bag right back, with additional force for good measure, and demand an explanation, or just shut up and pack. Bruce packed. He was, he liked to think, by no means a man easily steered, but there was something, a glint in Tony's eye, perhaps, that brooked no opposition
So off they went, and it was only in the limousine on the way to the airfield (somehow, Tony refused to see the correlation between flashy modes of transportation and irritating attention from the tabloids) that he had deigned to reveal some portion of his plans.
"I've never seen a problem like this. There's no trace of what went wrong. All we have are the sensors going crazy minutes before the explosion. Someone got into our system and tampered with it, but all the evidence has gone up in flames. All we have is the data that Lindemann sent before-" Tony cut himself off and looked down at his phone, fiddling with the screen and moving icons around the menu. Bruce patted his shoulder awkwardly. What to say in this situation? Nothing. There was nothing helpful to say. Lindemann had been the most gifted scientist that Stark Industries had ever recruited, and Bruce had been shocked at the care with which Tony had cultivated the quiet, studious young man. There was no way to cushion the loss of such promise. Finally, Tony mastered himself, pocketed the cell, and casually resumed his train of thought.
"We need a very particular kind of expertise to deal with this and prevent it in future. So I'm bringing in a systems guy." Well that's not vague at all. Bruce waited patiently for further explanation, but it seemed that none was forthcoming. Wrestling back his irritation, he prompted:
"Well?"
"You know, control theory, chaotic nonlinear systems, that sort of thing."
"Those are two different fields. I don't think that you can find a single person to deal with this. It'll need to be a team."
"It will be. You'll help."
"Tony, I'm a particle physicist, not some general-issue comic-book scientist that you can just fire at any ill-defined problem-"
"Nonsense, that's exactly what you are. Sol's that way, too. You'll like her. She's a snob."
"Wait a minute, you already have someone in mind? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Well duh." It always surprised Bruce exactly how much like a Valley girl his middle-aged genius friend could sound.
"Who? Who could you possibly trust enough to deal with this?" Tony extracted a leather case from beneath his seat and handed it to Bruce, who accepted in, perplexed.
"Delilah Solomon, electrical engineer. Currently running R&D in that capsized duck of a company, Williams Innovations. Well, not any more."
"You've already recruited her?"
"Well, yes, in a manner of speaking." Oh dear. That tone was familiar in the worst way.
"What did you do?"
"I bought the company. I mean, it's pretty useless since Sanford's idiot son took over, but I figure it could be fun to raid for parts. Like Delilah Solomon."
"Jesus, Tony, you bought her?"
"Well, if you're going to put it that way…"
"Tony-"
"Listen. Just read her work and tell me that she isn't exactly what we need," Tony cut through Bruce's objections, gesturing to the case.
"Fine." Bruce began moodily flipping through the thick pile of peer-reviewed papers and proposals. As he read, he realized that Tony was, as usual, partly right. This was what they needed, this analytical power, this ability to reduce and solve complex systems and work from scant information. She had worked in several fields: biophysics and neuroscience, optimization in power systems, and materials.
And, as usual, Tony was partly catastrophically wrong. The mind laid out before him in these papers would not respond well to Tony's brand of persuasion. Bruce winced, imagining how he would have responded to an industrial giant waltzing in and buying his loyalty. No, this would never work. Scholars and large corporations were a volatile mix, and Tony clearly did not know whom he was dealing with.
But still, here he was, trapped in a jet with a megalomaniac and his ego, and all he could do was leave them to scheme, soaring tens of thousands of feet above reality.
Author's Note: So I don't really have the expertise to write the technicalities of the problem very specifically, and as a result, the whole plot will be rather hand-waving and vague. Sorry about that. I do like writing scientists, though, so with any luck Banner, Stark, and Solomon will be entertaining. Thanks for reading!