Finally! This is the chapter I wanted to right since the moment I began with this series and now I'm finally able to share it with you guys :D
This is where the story officially comes to life, the moment these teens meet each other is the moment this story caught life for me.
Hope you enjoy it
"It's beautiful isn't it J?", asked Tony as he observed his brand new tower light up after connecting it to its new energy source.
"It certainly is, Sir", JARVIS answered.
"Take a picture and send it to Pep and Rhodey, we're still not done trying to convince them to move here", said Tony as he began to land on the tower's landing area.
"Right away Sir."
Tony sighed as he stepped into his new living room. The tower was perfect, the new environment was perfect, everything was fine, except for the fact that there wasn't anybody beside himself and JARVIS in the Tower. It wasn't ideally what he would have wanted, but he had grown so tired of LA and the way Pepper's dad would barely meet his eyes whenever he went to visit – same with Pepper's mom, she wasn't too happy with their friendship either. Ever since he'd become Iron Man – or Iron Lad as some of the news channels liked to call him – it had become increasingly difficult to just have a simple life. The events that happened while he had thought that he was going to die didn't really help his case at all.
Oh well, he was going to make himself a new, better life here at NY whatever it cost him.
"Hey J, prepare some drinks, I feel like I'm going to have a long night tonight!", he called to the ceiling.
"Chocolate caramel milkshake as always, Sir?"
"Yessss", Tony said happily and plopped himself on one of the sofas, "Also, get me the stats of the company."
"Stock value went up again today. Your newest invention is being a huge success in the market, Sir."
Tony grinned, "Of course it is, I'm the best."
"Still feeling the need to praise yourself Stark? You really do have a big ego."
Tony did not then scream like a girl. He was going to deny it till the grave.
"What the fuck are you doing here, Natalia, Natanata, Nat-whatever?!"
"Natanata?", Natasha raised an eyebrow at him.
"Whatever your name is today, so yeah, my guess is as good as any. Also, I have a heart condition for fuck's sake! Couldn't you have knocked? How did you even get in here?!"
"I'm sorry Sir, she overrode my codes and asked me not to tell you she was coming up."
Tony looked up at the ceiling in betrayal.
"Before you start accusing your AI of treason or some other type of nonsense, let me tell you I'm here on serious business", said Natasha.
Sighing dramatically Tony decided to let JARVIS off the hook – for now – and gestured at Natasha to sit down – she didn't budge, "What is it? I really can't imagine a reason for you to come here unless", he stood up and straightened his back, "Unless SHIELD has ordered you to get rid of me?"
Natasha rolled her eyes, "No, though this does have to do with SHIELD."
"What happened?", asked Tony curiously, walking around his giant sofa to go stand by Natasha.
She looked hesitant for a moment before she closed her eyes and opened them again, seemingly having sought inner resolve and found it, "This morning in the early hours there was an alien infiltration at SHIELD."
"Alien as in-"
"From outer space. It's not the first time we've had contact with this race in particular, but that's beside the point-"
"Wait, you're telling me aliens exist and that they're beside the fucking point?!", exclaimed Tony incredulously.
"Yes, now listen carefully, next comes the tricky part-"
"Wha-"
"The alien that came through a portal of sorts began brainwashing SHIELD staff", she paused for a moment, "One of the people he took with him is my friend. I – I owe him my life."
Tony stared at her for a long moment, "And you want me to help you do what – defeat that alien?"
Natasha got a memory stick out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Tony, "Director Fury has this pet project he's been keeping under wraps called the Avengers Initiative, he's only talked to one person that I know of about this."
Tony eyed the drive as he took it from Natasha's hand, "And that person just happened to be you?"
She made a noise that sounded very much like a snort, "No, I just overheard them. I'm a spy, remember? The reason why Fury hasn't told anybody about this is because all the candidates for the Initiative are still minors, so he's decided to wait a few years until it's legal to form a team of them."
Tony had by now plugged in the drive and had JARVIS expand all the information around the glass windows.
"Oh boy."
"You see that? That's the alien's brother that came to earth about a year ago. Wrecked a whole town."
Tony swallowed hard as he saw the footage, "Okay", he said and swapped to see the next files and found himself looking at the files of all the Avengers candidates, "Wait, wait, the Hulk is actually a kid?!"
Natasha nodded, "I don't know the whole story, but from what I've heard is that Banner's father was trying to replicate the super soldier serum and when he died Banner tried to replicate it at his foster father's lab. It sorta blew up in his face."
"He was freaking 8 when that happened!"
"He's a genius, figure you'll make good friends", Natasha said with a shrug, "He's 11 now, you're almost the same age now."
"Excuse you, I'm 13, thank you very much", Tony huffed and saw Natasha from the corner of his eye stifle a chuckle at him.
Ignoring her Tony looked through several more files, "Wait, when did you people unearth Captain freaking America?!"
"A few months ago. He prefers to be called Steve though and", She paused for the dramatic effect, "I know which gym he frequents here in New York."
Tony turned to look at her and grinned, "You have all this planned out, don't you?"
She shrugged, "Up to a point, I'm afraid I can only do so much by myself though."
He nodded in understanding, looked back at all the files that Natasha had dumped on him and took a deep breath, "Okay, give me a few hours and I'll be up to date with all of this and we can get started off."
Natasha grinned.
Tony decided in the end to cut some of his reading short and leave what was left for the flight from NY to India. It was a fairly big load of information and even he was having trouble understanding everything that had gone wrong to create the Hulk.
When they landed in India Natasha suggested a plan to lure the Hulk out to the outskirts of the city, Tony though, had completely different plans.
"You're going to get us both killed", she hissed at him as they made their way up the dingy building to where there was rumored to live a genius little doctor. Apparently most people simply thought he was a misshapen little man that had had growth problems since he hid his face from the world most of the time with a tunic.
"Just follow my lead", Tony whispered back at her and draped his arm around her shoulder – a difficult task, seeing as Natasha was quite a bit taller than him – the other arm curling protectively around his belly.
As they approached the clinic Tony began moaning and making increasingly distressed faces.
"Hullo? Anybody here? I need a doctor! Please!", he half swooned as he said the last part. Natasha looked like she was bursting something in her effort not to roll her eyes at him.
They were quickly approached by a small figure with his face partially covered with a shawl, "Where does it hurt?", it sounded like an older person's raspy voice, tinged with the accent of somebody that knew how to speak multiple languages and had allowed all of them to influence him. If Tony hadn't known he would have thought it was simply a little man, but now that he knew he could easily distinguish the raspy voice as that of a child trying to cover up for the fact that he hadn't gone through puberty yet.
"My belly!", he wailed, "My sister", he gestured at Natasha, who really was going to kill him by the looks of it, "She poisoned me!"
This time Natasha did actually roll her eyes, "Don't mind his dramatics, but if you could help his tummy pain it would help a lot."
"Ah, yes, I think I might have something here. Please sit while I go looking", he left and Tony took the opportunity to grin at Natasha, letting her go and going after Banner.
Banner looked startled when he saw Tony had followed him to the back of his dingy apartment-office-place-whatever-this-was.
Tony immediately held up his hands in an attempted sign at peacefulness, "Okay, sorry I lied but I need to talk to you in private."
Banner looked at him questioningly, "I don't understand, I'm nobody special-"
Tony snorted, "Puh-lease, you and I both know you're probably one of the smartest kids in this world, I mean, after myself of course, but that doesn't make you any less awesome", he held out his hand, "Name's Tony Stark, you can ditch that awful thing on your face, I know you're Bruce Banner."
The boy looked hesitant for a moment before he took off the horrible cloth that covered his face and revealed a young face of slightly-too-thin 11 year old boy.
"Why are you here?", he asked.
"Okay, this is a long story, can I sit down? Imma gonna sit down here", he sat down and took out his tablet and expanded it, "Come on, don't be shy, come sit by my side while I bring you up to date with what has been happening in the world."
Banner – Nah, he was Bruce now, you can't call a kid like him Banner – Bruce was looking terribly nervous as he sat down at Tony's side.
"So, to start off, did you know they finally discovered that aliens do indeed exist?"
Bruce's eyes widened with awe and Tony instantly knew they were on their way to becoming best friends.
Natasha had to come retrieve them eventually when they had been talking for well over an hour. In this time period Tony had not only managed to convince Bruce to come help them save the world – as Bruce the child genius, not the Hulk – but also began packing his meager possessions into a meager suitcase while Bruce immersed himself in all the stuff that Tony had from the drive Natasha had given him.
On the flight to NY their friendship was solidified as they talked science and geeked out over all the fun times they were going to have in Tony's lab looking for the Tesseract. Natasha would occasionally just glance at them with an expression of fond exasperation.
When they arrived at NY Natasha proposed that they hit their next target. Bruce was okay with coming along to meet the famous Captain America – who was physically just a year older than Tony, who would have thought? – Natasha, though, insisted they approach the Captain her way this time. Tony had been too engrossed over a discussion about the properties of Gamma rays when Natasha said this so he didn't offer much protest.
The gym was in the older parts of Brooklyn and looked nothing like what Tony expected from a gym of this day and age. Natasha left the van that had brought them thus far and entered the gym, leaving Tony and Bruce with the strict instructions to not leave the van.
Tony had been about the protest, but then Bruce made a remark about the architectural design of his precious tower and the next thing Tony noticed was that there was a blond lanky teen climbing into their van.
"Um", the blond stopped as he was halfway in and looked nervously from Tony to Bruce.
"Get in already Steve", came Natasha's gripe from behind.
The blond – who probably was Captain America when Tony thought about it – settled in awkwardly and scooted to make place for Natasha to get in as well.
When they were all settled into the van an awkward silence fell.
"Tony", Natasha began, all of the sudden, "Why don't you introduce yourself to Steve here", she turned to face Bruce, "You too Bruce."
Tony wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, "I'm Tony Stark, as you probably know already, this here his Brucie Bruce, AKA the Hulk, AKA Bruce Banner, AKA Bruce the child genius Banner, that there is Natasha, AKA Nat-Nat-"
"Okay, that's enough", Natasha interrupted his wonderful introduction. Bruce was looking slightly mortified and Captain America was looking confused.
Natasha threw Tony a glare that was obviously meant to silence him and then turned to face Steve, "We are having a situation. The whole planet is having a situation and we could all use your help", she produced a folder from fuck knew where and handed it to Steve, "It would help us if you could tell us how much you know about the Tesseract."
Steve looked pretty horrified when he saw the Tesseract's photo in the file and he only became paler the more he read. Tony could relate a little to what he was probably feeling, sacrificing your life to get rid of the results of one thing and then coming back to life only to discover that the same thing you tried to destroy back then has come back to haunt you.
"It was better off in the middle of the ocean", Steve said sternly after a few moments of reading, "Why hasn't SHIELD called me in to help deal with this?"
"You're a minor, as well as all of us", drawled Tony, checking his nails as he discreetly tried to see Steve's face. There was a strange expression on his face, one that Tony wasn't really able to read. All that he could surmise about it was that it was sad and maybe a little resigned.
"Yet we clearly are the best bet the planet currently has, I mean, look at the team we have right here! Super spy, super genius, billionaire, philanthropist and another super genius with a tendency to wreck stuff – and then you, of course", Tony grinned at Steve.
Steve stared at him for a moment, then back at the folder in his hands and when he looked up again he nodded, "I'm in."
Tony whooped and since he was small enough his arms didn't even hit the ceiling of the van, "Excellent, my tower is just around the corner, the labs are already running a search – though I think it might need to be recalibrated – we also have tabs on SHIELD in case they find something and get themselves in over their heads and need help."
Steve didn't look like he approved too much of that last part if his frown was anything to go by. Natasha quickly intervened and before much could be complained about they were at the tower and discussion had renewed between Bruce and Tony.
They hadn't been long at the tower when JARVIS announced that Loki had been found in Germany. Tony still had a prototype of some type of jet at his disposal so they all piled into it and took off at top speed towards Germany. Bruce had protested that he didn't want to go along, but had gotten dragged along anyways.
When they neared the area Loki had been sighted at Tony flew out of the jet in order to get there first. What he found there was decidedly more than what he had bargained for. Standing in front of a crowd of kneeling people in the middle of the streets of the city was Loki. He was clad in fancy green weird clothes and a goat-y helmet, but this wasn't what unsettled Tony. It was the way Loki's hands and arms were covered in blood up unto his elbows, the way his bloody fingers were twitching and the way he was simply looking like parts of his body were jerking at odd intervals.
Fortunately Captain America arrived soon after so that they could be creeped out together by Loki. They had a brief fight as they subdued Loki and no matter how much Tony concentrated on the image of Loki threatening a crowd of kneeling people, he still felt like a bully for blasting the little boy across the streets.
Steve quickly cuffed him and even sooner than that they had him on their plane with plans to take him back to the tower until all was over and they could transfer him to the authorities. Neither Steve nor Bruce were fans of this idea, Steve because – as Tony was learning – he was a pompous ass, and Bruce because he simply felt deeply uncomfortable while near Loki.
The flight went mostly in peace, Bruce had taken the passenger seat to be up front with Natasha and as far away as was possible from Loki while Steve and Tony watched Loki in the back of the jet. Sure, Natasha got several calls from SHIELD, but she was adamant on getting her friend back, so there were no worries about her giving them over to SHIELD.
Then, of course, the mythical ruler of thunder and lightning had to come and wreak havoc on everything and take Loki away. His first prisoner ever and Tony had managed to lose him within the hour of obtaining him. Tony was sure he was breaking some new kind of record.
He didn't waste any time in going after Thor and teach him a lesson. The little thief even had the nerve of being taller than Tony, looking like he could almost be Steve's age, the bastard. Their fight started off greatly, he used sass and got charged up to maximum and beyond and then, just when their fight was about to reach epic proportions Steve had to come and break it up. Stupid Steve and his stupid shield.
Stupid Natasha too – not that he would ever say that part out aloud – who went and answered SHIELD's calls and stroke a deal with them while Tony was fighting Thor. To be honest he had been pretty incensed when he found this out, which made the already tense ride even tenser. It became bearable though, when he saw the Helicarrier for the first time. It was such a beautiful work of art that Tony calmed down instantly when he saw it for the first time. And then, even better, he could walk around inside of it and annoy Fury in person just as much as he wanted to.
It was obvious that Fury didn't want to have them there, but didn't have much of an option after Tony told him that he and Bruce had already started to run the searching program and would have the results of the Tesseract's whereabouts sooner than any of their own scientists would have it. So they settled them in a fancy new lab, gave Natasha a stern talking to and left Steve mostly to himself, since there was still some amount of respect going about for Captain America.
All in all it seemed to be going pretty boring, until Tony began cracking down on SHIELD, Fury got there and basically told them it was all Thor's fault and Steve was there and angry and oh fu-
It went to hell pretty quickly. One moment they were still staring at Bruce after his horrible – how could something like that have happened to that sweet little boy? – confession and then they were all flying as an explosion rocked the Helicarrier around. Then they were running to fix the motor and fighting was going all around them and the Hulk was on the loose and fuck knew what was happening and – it was hell.
Cap and he had a brief moment of bonding over one of the broken motors of the Helicarrier. It was really special, he was mostly shouting at Cap to pull that freaking lever already dammit, while Cap was apparently fighting for his life and almost fell to his death. It was all pretty intense.
And then the fight was over, a head count was held and they found out they were short Bruce, Thor and Loki. Also, Agent Agent, whom Pepper adored, was dead. It felt like a punch in the gut for Tony. Cap looked mostly confused until somebody told him it was the guy that made him his new costume and then suddenly Steve looked all sad and had a whole new appreciation for his suit.
The good news was though, that Natasha got her friend back. Apparently all he needed was to be hit in the head to free him from being brainwashed. As Steve went around and tried to assemble what was left of the Mini-Avengers – Tony had called them that once and had Natasha glared at him in a terrifying way – Tony got to see Natasha's friend for the first time. As odds would have it, he was also a boy, looking about Tony's age, just a little older. Also taller – that motherfu-.
Tony was the first one out of all of them to fly back to New York – where they figured out the Tesseract was going to be – and then Tony had the dubious honor of finding Loki pacing his living room.
At first he was about to simply sass at the boy until he could no longer handle Tony or something, but then he saw how Loki was still twitching and remembered Thor's heartbroken expression as he listened to Loki rant madly in his cell about destruction and all such things. Tony looked once again into Loki's eyes and found a disturbing absence in them. True, he didn't exactly know how aliens worked, but he was quite sure that there had to at least be something in their eyes, like there was with Thor's. Thor was brimming with emotions and felt no need to hide them for even so much as a second.
"Hey", he began gently as he walked slowly into the living room, but at seeing Loki's twitching intensify he knew he had to try keep it short, "Liking the place? I designed it you know – well, mostly. I hired an architect, but most of it was all my idea."
Instead of the normal reaction Tony normally got when he was being more of a narcissist than usual, like people getting annoyed, irritated or angry, Loki simply stared at him like he was talking some strange language – and Tony having already been subjected to part of Thor's speech about Allspeak aboard the Helicarrier knew this was not Loki's case.
Suddenly Loki looked out of the window agitatedly, "They're coming", he said, "It's almost their time."
Tony tried another route, "Why are you trying to take over Earth?", he asked, because subtlety has never been his forte.
Loki snapped his head towards Tony so fast it can only have hurt him, "It- its-", he stopped and looked out of the window again, "Do not question my motives human. I am here to free you. Liberty is nothing but a prison, true freedom is found under ruling."
Tony stared at him for a full minute, "Something's wrong with you", he didn't mean to say it out loudly, and by the look that Loki threw him afterwards it wasn't exactly his best plan. He was quickly right on top of Tony and tapping his spear on Tony's chest and that up close Tony noticed for the first time that there were bags under his eyes and he was paler than what's considered healthy.
Looking with new understanding at Loki it didn't even come to his mind to start mocking the child, since suddenly Tony had a whole new level of understanding of what was going through Loki's mind. The last time Tony had ever seen somebody looking as lost as him, with bags under his eyes and with skin several shades too pale to be healthy was when he had just escaped from those caves in Afghanistan.
He was halfway to start getting flashbacks of his time in the caves when Loki swatted him – his size truly did not give away the strength he had – and he went flying out of the window. Fortunately he had thought of putting on his bracelets before he began talking with Loki, otherwise he would have died in a terrible splat before the true fighting even began.
From there on things only got worse. Suddenly there was a portal open above in the sky and aliens were pouring out and wreaking destruction on the city below. Citizens were running all around the place in search for shelter and there were pieces of debris already falling down from some buildings, mostly glass, but still rather dangerous for anybody below.
The team arrived shortly after and began helping with the containment effort, Cap giving orders over the coms and Barton and Natasha crashing their jet. In short order Thor and Bruce came and joined the party – Tony was kind enough to take it right to where they were. It was a pretty long fight, but fortunately they all had coms so Tony was able to convey to Thor that his brother might need some recalibrating of his own. This seemed to give the blond alien new energy as he went right through big chunks of invading aliens to get to the tower where Loki had been the whole time.
Unfortunately the coms didn't convey whatever happened between the two of them then, but after a long stretch of fighting without any of them seeing Thor in the battle they heard his slightly crackly voice – Tony swore that voice was going to become a deep baritone once it fully broke and Thor got over puberty – that Loki had been possessed and that he was currently in Tony's tower in some sort of state of shock.
Barton didn't sound too enthusiastic about it, but the rest of team sounded a bit more open to the idea. They asked Thor to try find out how to close the portal and after a couple minutes they were rewarded with an answer. Natasha was there before anybody could start to think of who would be the best suited for the job and taking the spear up to where Selvig – or Dr. S, as Thor insisted on calling him – was still cackling madly to himself.
Right as things finally started looking up Fury called Tony and of course it was not only bad news, but terrible news. The portal closing had to be put on pause as he called in and alerted the team of a nuclear bomb headed right at them. There were a couple of very tense moments after Tony informed the team he knew just where to put the bomb.
The unending silence was broken by Cap as he said, "Good luck Tony", Tony felt pretty damn appreciative of Steve right then and decided the old man in a child's body wasn't as bad as he had thought.
As he was heading into the portal he wished he had somebody to call, like a parent or any other kind of family member and he didn't want to scare Pepper and he knew how upset Rhodey would be if he realized Tony was trying to give him a goodbye call, so in the end he didn't call anybody.
It was the single most terrifying experience Tony had ever had in his life.
He came back to consciousness with the help of the Hulk roaring at his side and Steve and Clint looming over him.
"Oh thank goodness", Steve breathed as he closed his eyes in what was obvious relief at seeing Tony alive. The Hulk gave another roar, this one of happiness though. Clint looked pretty relieved too. Thor was asking over the coms if Tony was okay and Natasha was ordering them to check his breathing.
For the first time in – well, let's just say a very long time – Tony felt appreciated.
He felt like nothing could break his mood as he was helped up by his new friends. Unfortunately there was.
When they got to the tower it was to find Loki curled up in ball and swaying back and forth as he muttered to himself and cried without stop. Thor had draped him up in blanket and had a hand on his back and looked like he didn't know if he could establish further physical contact. Judging from Loki's state he would have had to say 'no'.
Upon seeing Loki trembling and basically speaking nonsense to himself the team had to agree that something was definitely wrong with Loki, even Clint, who looked like he would rather not have to accept reality. It took them over an hour to calm Loki down enough for him to actually accept a glass of water and when he finally began drinking he was like a man that had been in the desert for weeks.
Tony googled for foods that would help people that hadn't eaten in a long time and then checked with all the remaining open restaurants in the area and whooped when he found out that the Shwarma restaurant that he had seen during the battle was not only still open, but also served some sort of exotic broth that they could give Loki.
Thor immediately busied himself with changing Loki into something more conspicuous and then they were off.
The restaurant was everything Tony had hoped for and more. They were extra considerate with Loki when they saw him – it was impossible not to, he looked like a precious cinnamon ball that had been malnourished and that needed love – and gave him a light broth that did him wonders in no time. The rest of the team ate like pigs all the food that they could shove into their mouths, except for Thor who stopped every now and then to check on Loki or to order another bowl for his little brother.
When it became late Tony invited them all to his tower and they all happily accepted. Thor accepted for Loki, who had fallen asleep at some time during their lunch – dinner? Whatever that had been – and then proceeded to carry Loki all the way back to the tower.
Tony checked the news as everybody settled in to sleep that night and found that the world was praising them as 'little heroes' and 'little saviors' and all other kinds of names, usually followed by words like 'little' or 'small'. Tony decided he was going to throw a press conference as soon as he could to set the world straight on their name.
They were the fucking Avengers, Earth's mightiest motherfucking heroes.