Warnings for this chapter: Excessive violence/language

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CHAPTER SEVEN - Groundbuilding

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Conversations - Tony Stark

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Wade Wilson shuts the door to Steve's office behind me.

"Rogers," I say with a nod. "Our dead friend suggested you had one of your undercover guys on the phone for me."

He nods. He's already holding a phone to his ear. "I need your microprocessor briefing for my guy."

I beckon for the phone, and he places it in my hand. "Tony Stark speaking."

"H-hey! Mr. Stark!" squeaks a voice. "It's uh - uh - it's cool, nice, NICE, to meet you. I mean not - meet you. Just talk to you I guess. Wow. Uh. This is amazing."

His voice sounds familiar, but I can't place it. I pull the phone away from my ear. "I'm sorry, how old is this kid?"

Steve frowns. "Old enough. Eighteen."

"Indoctrinate them young, that's cool," I say. I have no problem with it, I just enjoy bothering Rogers. I've pulled kids younger from Shield and science programs across the U.S. to come intern for me before, but I haven't had one fangirl like this for awhile.

"Yello," I say back into the phone. "Nice to meet you as well. Listen. I know you're probably all deep in the trenches and what not, so I'll keep this brief. Microprocessors. They are one-to-two millimeters in circumference. Tiniest computer chips in the world. Previously invented and untested by Stark industries, unfortunately sold in a hostile company takeover in 2008.

"Recently stolen from said company that purchased them - a hundred of them - and now, apparently, in working condition. They program computers for missile launches to be more precise, more deadly, than ever before. While there are other missile programs that are comparable, they're on discs. Thumb drives. Shit easily found and can be installed by an eighth grader. These microprocessors have a great value in their transportation quality. You can contain them in a pill capsule. They have to be installed directly onto a motherboard, which requires actual experts that..."

I hear the furious scribbling of a pencil on paper in the background.

"Are you taking notes?" I ask incredulously.

"Oh, no, no," says the voice quickly. "Oh, geeze, no, that'd be - no. I'm not writing any of this down. Someone could find it. I listen better when I'm keeping my hands busy. I'm just drawing lines. Is… is that okay? Mr. Stark?"

"That's… fine," I reply slowly.

This kid is a fucking gem and I really hope he lives long enough to come work for me someday.

"Hydra agents were last seen with the transportation device but not found with the processors themselves. We think they were a front. We think they are finding their way into the Vulture's crew. I think Adrian Toomes will try to sell them for a million apiece to various buyers across the globe."

"So he's selling to enemies," the boy replies. "Um… I mean… I get why he wants to make money, but doesn't that seem like a stupid thing to do? Like… if he sells them to a hostile nation or something and they do like a nuclear attack later. Then we're all the ones that die, including him. Why wouldn't he think of that?"

"One would wish he would and have them destroyed. But the man sells weapons. That's how his brain is wired. I don't think he contemplates having them turned on him someday. Like you," I add, admirably. "You're a weapon in his midst. You're the stronger, smarter one. Don't forget that."

He sounds surprised by the encouragement. "Oh. Thanks. Yeah. I guess I am."

Steve nods, approvingly. "Thanks," he mouths.

"You'll do good, kid," I say. "Now listen. I'm briefing you because Cap wants you to keep an ear out for them. If there's going to be a sale… an exchange… transportation - anything. If you find out anything, you tell Captain Rogers right away."

"Yes sir, will do, sir."

"Good." I turn back to Steve. "That everything you need from me, Cap?"

"Thanks, Tony."

I hang on to the phone for a second. "You seem like a smart one. Are you?"

"I maintained a 4.0 for science and math in high school?"

I blink. He's so adorably humble it sounds like confidence. "When you're through with this nonsense, you come on back to the tower and try interning with me and Dr. Banner," I say. "Okay? Won't you like a break from all the street work?"

"Oh - wow - yeah! Mr. Stark, that'd be, wow, so - I'm. Yes. Yes. I would. I would like to."

Rogers chuckles. "All right, stop trying to steal my team."

"Clearly he belongs on mine," I reply. "Hang in there, kiddo! We're rooting for you. And don't worry, no one will know we had this conversation except for your handlers."

"Thanks Mr. Stark! I really - um, yeah, thanks."

I hand the phone back to Steve. "Nice one," I mouth, and then I leave the office, shutting the door carefully behind me.

Barnes and Sam Wilson are walking down the hall the opposite direction, trailed by Brock Rumlow. Jesus, I hate that guy. I wish Shield would stop trying to act like they're our oversight for the U.N. They're not.

We tolerate their presence because they have good resources. And probably because they are corrupt as fuck.

Now these three think they are Odin-blessed because they brought us a Dark Elf gun this morning and arrested the man they think who bought it, and killed, low-level mafia crime brothers. Well, make that Barnes and Rumlow.

Sam Wilson is okay. Maybe a little on-the-nose for loyalty to Captain America and no one else, as if the Avengers are not a team but merely disciples. But I can't fault him that. Steve Rogers inspires.

I'm sure that's how Steve got a science-geek to go undercover with the most dangerous criminal on the eastern seaboard. There has to be more to the story. He wouldn't just send any nerd in there.

There must be something special about this kid...

Suddenly I stop in the middle of the hallway.

I remember that voice.

I remember hearing it when we were researching unsigned vigilantes in New York.

Our research yielded some interesting results. There's a few blind ninjas and bullet-proof bouncers, but none of them donned neon pajamas and swung from skyscraper to skyscraper like this one, catching bad guys in spider-webs and delivering them on precinct doorsteps with friendly notes. There was a security video of the self-titled "Spider-Man" stopping a bank robbery in progress and taunting the criminals with that same squeaky tone.

I should have guessed then, the red-and-blue masked hero dropped off the radar after the "disturbance" during the job interviews for new interns. Last I heard, a kid lost his shit in our downstairs lobby and got carted away to prison. No one told me who it was, and I didn't care. Bigger fish to fry. I was too distracted. I didn't put the two together till now.

I break into a smile. Spider-Man is our guy inside of Vulture's crew.

I have to hand it to Rogers - that's ballsy. But smart. The kid is stronger than all of them put together - faster, smarter, and probably more flexible.

I have some ideas for when he's done. Like exchanging the pajamas for a real suit. My brain starts working in overdrive and I start walking back to the lab. I need to start some preliminary sketches immediately. One of these days he's going to be Team Stark and he'll feel prepared for anything.

I wonder about this though. How easy it was for me to figure it out. What if someone else figures it out too?

I try to think back on the day in the labs when we were researching the vigilantes… It was just the original crew that day, minus the prince of Asgard. Steve, myself, Bruce, Natasha, and Clint. People I trust with my life and every other life I know.

If any of them have put two-and-two together, he's still perfectly safe.

"We're not going to mess up this job," I hear in the distance.

I pause in the hall and look around the corner, where Barnes, Rumlow, and Sam are still walking back towards the elevators. I don't know why I'm eavesdropping.

"Thanks to handing the gun over this morning," Barnes is saying, "Steve wants us to follow up on this. Start tracking some of the other purchases and see if it can lead us back to interested parties. If we can't find them, maybe we can find the people who will be calling the Vulture to buy them."

"Great," Rumlow says gruffly. "So we're running errands."

"Welcome to the Hardy Boys," chuckles Barnes. The reference is lost on them. It's not that they don't understand it, they just don't find it funny. Ha ha.

"If we knew who the undercover guys were, it'd be a little easier to get information on that?" Rumlow asks with frustration. "I don't get why everything is so compartmentalized with you guys on high priority missions. Shield organizes by levels. A certain level grants you access to all the information you need to be successful."

"Well, lemme tell you my theory," Sam Wilson replies. "It's because we - aren't - SHIELD, AGENT Rumlow."

Rumlow glares at him. "Well aware, thank you."

"It's the right thing to do," Barnes replies. "Steve's got everyone's best interests at heart - and - frankly - I do not think he trusts anyone. Even me, to a degree. Not as a personal insult but to protect the team."

"Protect us from what, exactly?" Sam asks. "Last I checked, the Avengers weren't in danger from anything except weird nicknames and eclectic costume changes."

"Like Tony Stark said in the briefing," Barnes replies uneasily. "Who knows who Hydra has their clutches in? Could be anyone. We have to be on guard for that. No matter what."

His cell phone rings. He steps away to answer, and I pull back behind the wall.

"Yes," he answers tersely. "No, I won't order that. That's got to come from the Captain directly. Make those requests to him. I'm not your boss. We're on the same team. Okay?"

I have no idea who he is talking to, but what kind of hot shot would ask him permission for something in the field before talking to Steve Rogers? A middle-tier trainee, most likely, whose getting called in for the same missions, except for the low-key tasks. Like driving a car.

Even - even if, Barnes dissuades them in their misplacement, and points them back to the actual line of command, that's dangerous. Maybe he inspires leadership and loyalty of his own, too.

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Murder Capital - Peter Parker

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The next week when I get told to get into a car, it's a SUV and Schultz is driving. Toomes sits in the passenger seat, and Jackson Brice sits with me in the back. Davis is nowhere to be seen.

It's about eleven-thirty in the morning and I get the feeling we're on our way to certain violence.

My skin crawls with it, anticipates it.

They chatter sort of incessantly. Some of it business related, but nothing I can use. They only discuss the actual material. Which carbon they prefer. Something about using the last of their inventory from Greenwich. Asking if the soil in New Mexico still contains traces of Asgardian rubble and how can it be isolated.

They don't say anything about the microprocessors.

"You ready for some fun, kid?" Toomes asks when Schultz pulls to a stop in front of an old, twelve-story apartment in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Otherwise known as the murder capital of New York.

"Born ready." I answer. "What do you want me to do?"

"Easy," Toomes says. "Brice is going to do a little client follow up survey. You need to watch his back while he does it. Got it?"

"Yeah, yeah. Got it."

We pull under one of the parking structures, and Brice and I get out and slam the doors. We follow the sidewalk up into the entry of the apartment building. We should need to be buzzed in, but we don't. With a few hard yanks, Brice opens the door right up. It's stuck but not locked.

We go through the main lobby and to the apartments on the first floor, into a back hallway. This place looks like an abandoned set for a zombie movie.

Brice pounds with his fist on the door of 138.

"Open up Jimmy," he calls out. "It's Jackson Brice."

There's a shuffle on the other side and Jimmy opens the door, a middle-aged, grizzled man who looks about fifteen years older than he should be due to meth use and rotten teeth. His stained army jacket, jeans, and white thinning hair stink with body odor and cigarettes.

"The fuck you want?" he asks.

"Need to have a word with your brother."

"Caleb ain't in."

"Move," Jackson snaps.

Jimmy obeys, steps aside and lets the door hang open. He walks over to a chair in a trash-filled living area. It looks like he hoards newspapers and drug paraphernalia.

Caleb is standing near the dinette table by the half-kitchen. "Listen," he says quickly, eyes widening as Brice approaches him in three short strides. "I can get you the…"

Brice jacks his arm back and punches him hard in the mouth.

I jolt with surprise, but no one notices my reaction. Jimmy watches Brice and his brother.

Caleb flies back into the dining chair, holding out his empty hands pleadingly. "I said I'd get you the fucking money!" he exclaims.

"You got a fucking discount on the Chitauri baton," Brice shouts angrily into his face. "On account that you destroy Paxson with it. And what'd you fucking do? Paxson's gone, off to Florida as far as I can tell. So you owe us fourteen-thousand dollars in difference."

"I don't - I don't have fourteen thousand dollars yet! The other guys haven't paid me MY share yet for protecting them with the damn thing on their deliveries!"

Brice hits him again. "What, can't you pressure them to make a timely payment plan?"

Caleb gasps. "I get paid next week! Next week! I'm getting a thousand each! I can get you your money with interest if you just fucking give me time to do it!"

"We practically gave you a two-hundred-thousand dollar Chitauri baton for free to help out with the enforcement and you can't even take out one rival in your little street gangs?" Brice hits him a third time. "Are you going to pay us our fucking money back?"

"I'm gonna pay you the fucking money back!" Caleb hollers.

I see Jimmy - eyes locked onto Brice's back - reach into his front coat pocket.

In barely half a second, I've sprung across the room, feet barely touching the ground, jerking Jimmy's hand out of his pocket and slamming the wrist back against the wall with both hands. I overestimate my distance, and my cast slams into his mouth, breaking teeth.

A box of Marlboros flies out of his hand, and he screams into the plaster with pain.

"Shit!" he shouts, falling sideways out of his chair and onto the floor. He spits out a mouthful of blood. Brice turns back and looks at me, dumbfounded. "I was going for my cigarettes!" he protests with a horrible gurgle. "Just - cigarettes!"

"The fuck you doing?" Brice asks me.

"I thought he was going to pull a gun on you!"

"You don't HIT Jimmy!" Brice exclaims in disbelief. He turns back to Caleb and hits him again. "Pay up, fucker, next week. With interest. Or we take the baton back over your dead body and sell it to China with your blood still on it. Got it?"

"GOT IT," Caleb moans.

"Come on, Parker," Brice gestures to me and makes me follow up out of the apartment. We leave the door standing open behind us.

I can hear the distressed voices of Caleb and Jimmy cursing about their injuries trailing after us down the hall.

We emerge out of the apartment building. The sun has broken through the gray, smoggy clouds. It feels warm against the ice-cold chill shattering me from my neck to my lower back. Schultz kept the car running, and we get inside.

"How was your first day of school, sweetheart?" Toomes asks sarcastically.

"He punched Jimmy's teeth out!" Brice exclaims, giving me a look of annoyance. "You can't do the shit we do if you turn into a hothead just because the guy smells bad!"

"I didn't do it just because!" I shout back defensively. "I'm your guard dog, right? That's what you wanted? I don't know Jimmy. He reached into his pocket, it looked like he had a gun. I thought he was going to shoot you in the back, okay?"

Toomes grins. "You know who Jimmy is now, don't you?"

"A customer?" I ask sarcastically.

"Yeah, a customer we were able to upsale. And customers pay us when they buy from us. So don't you just kill 'em for no reason."

"I didn't kill him," I respond angrily. "I just bumped into his teeth with my cast."

Schultz breaks into laughter. "I would have liked to have seen that."

"Look, I like a guy who busts someone's teeth once in awhile," Toomes says.

Brice rolls his eyes.

"What do you think?" Toomes asks him. "Graduate to first grade?"

"Just barely," Brice sighs.

"All right," Toomes hands me an old cellphone from the front seat. "This is your work phone. We call you when we have a job. You never call us directly, you reach my tech-guy. We replace them regularly to keep them untraceable. It will ring to Mason."

"Who is Mason?"

"The secretary for all you know," Toomes says sternly. "Couldn't keep his paws off my phone anyway so we just made him my receptionist while he works in an undisclosed location. He answers. He gets us the info. Mason is the ONLY person that you call. Ever. He can talk with us. You don't talk with us. We talk to you. Okay?"

"Okay," I say nervously, accepting the phone. I immediately open it, look at the blank screen, and shut it again, tucking it into my hoodie pocket.

"I didn't quite hear that," Toomes says again.

"I understand," I reply firmly.

Toomes's phone rings. He answers. "What?" he asks shortly. "Ah. Well hello there, MASON," he gives me a look, as if proving a point he's very excited about. "I see. Thanks for the message." He hangs up. "A friend of a friend just told Mason that we have some Shield activity nearby."

I try to keep my face neutral.

"Take the next right," Toomes says. "We're not heading into Manhattan today if they're getting itchy."

"So where are we going?" Schultz asks.

"Let's get lunch," Toomes responds. "Lobster Joint."

The Lobster Joint is literally around the corner from Uncle Ben's garage. Literally.

I'm sure Uncle Ben had lunch here multiple times. Maybe that's where he met the Vulture in the first place.

I say nothing.

When we get there, Schultz and Brice order their food to go, pay in cash, and go sit in the SUV. Toomes slaps my shoulder in an overly friendly way and gestures to a table. "Call it a business lunch," he says. "It's on me."

I can't shake the uneasiness I feel about his white, white teeth. Like they're going to extend just a little longer and grow points like those old school vampire movies.

Though Toomes is a little easier to spend time with than I expected. He keeps the conversation rolling, and I answer in stilted, short answers. It feels like a distant family member taking out a young cousin for lunch as a graduation gift even though he hadn't interacted with him in years.

"So you got a lot of good grades at Midtown," he says. "Shame you threw it all away."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"My daughter used to go there. Few years back."

"Huh. Interesting." I don't remember ever meeting a girl with the last name Toomes. Definitely not worth tracking down a yearbook over.

"Your history of violence," Toomes continues. "Started at that failed job interview?"

I shake my head. "Actually, no."

"Oh yeah? When did it start? School record was clean."

"I would get into fights on the street. Never seen, caught, never arrested for it."

"What? Did you rob your fellow students for milk money?"

I shake my head. "I would run into people in the city. Taking shortcuts, walking home, didn't matter. Ran into people spoiling for fights. I'd give them fights."

Fighting bad guys to save victims wearing red and blue sweatpants, but...

"Brice made a valuable point earlier," Toomes says. "Hotheads are good in a life or death situations but you can't pop everyone who gives you a funny look."

"I learned that well enough," I reply. "I'll be careful. I swear."

He looks down at my still-full plate. "Do you ever eat?" He reaches over and pushes the plate closer. "At least eat one breadstick, for crying out loud. I don't want my new hires to waste away before I get a chance to use them."

I pick up the breadstick and nibble on it. I don't have very much of an appetite. Too much stress, not enough sleep. I bought a jar of peanut butter for the garage to dig into if I am in desperate need of a snack with a little protein and sugar.

"You know," Toomes says, "If your Uncle Ben was alive, and saw you sitting here with me, wouldn't matter how nice of a working relationship we had. He would kill me and every single one of my guys to get you out of my presence."

I know this about my uncle - his protectiveness, his capability to be a warrior if he needed to be - but at the same time - it's weird to hear someone else say it. Especially someone like the Vulture.

"He would grab this butter knife right here," Toomes slabs some butter onto his lobster, "And he would saw my throat open with it."

I feel the blood drain from my face. I put the breadstick down.

"You know he never killed, hurt, or robbed anyone, right?" Toomes continues, misinterpreting my expression. I am disgusted by his violent words. He thinks I'm worried about Uncle Ben's record. "He just wanted to help people, never got greedy with money. You can't do shit with a person like that. Cannot be bribed except with threat of harm for the loved ones."

I gulp.

"Benny was a good guy," he says. "The absolute best. But that would not have stopped him from sacrificing his soul on your account. If he saw you here with me today, even if it sent him right to hell, he'd kill everyone here and haul you out by your shirt tails and send you packing right home to that Aunt of yours."

I shrug. "I don't want to be reminded that my choice of occupation would disappoint him."

"I'm not saying you'd disappoint him. I'm saying it's not too late to bow out if you wana do right by him."

I'm startled by this, and I can't hide it. "You mean quit on my first day?"

"I wouldn't fault you for it, honest," Toomes says. "If you left the restaurant today and I never saw you again, I wouldn't hunt you down. You aren't that valuable to me yet. Stick around, you might get there. But today is your last chance if you want to walk away."

I shake my head, wishing I had the smarts to accept. Wishing I was doing the brave thing to say yes to Toomes's proposal, and then immediately call Captain America and ask for him to get me out. I could do it now. It would be easy.

"I need a job," I try to shrug nonchalantly.

"Ever thought about going back to school?" He wipes his mouth with a napkin. "It's not too late to apply for college in the fall."

"I'm not going back to school now that I'm a felon," I sigh. "Like I said before - my opportunities went down to zip."

"Don't bash college just yet," Toomes leaves cash on the table and gestures for me to follow him out the door. "You're so fucking young."

We drive back to Queens after lunch and pick up Aaron Davis in a parking garage, then we drop off Toomes and Schultz at the same apartment Jackson Brice took me to last week for my job interview with the hand in the bag.

For awhile the three of us left just… drive around, seemingly with no purpose. Once in awhile we stop, and Jackson runs out into a building, coming out with either money or nothing. It's strange.

He doesn't ask me to be his guard dog again.

This continues well past sunset and I'm starting to get wired and exhausted both, running on adrenaline and worry, wishing I had eaten more at the lobster joint.

Eventually we stop outside of a warehouse with a large, empty plaza in front of it, save a single parked silver sedan in the front. The sun has finally just dropped below the horizon and the every building is dark gray in the twilight, shadows deepening and the sky turning lavender above us.

"Here, take this thing," Jackson hands me a small cylinder. It's metal, rigid, about the size of a pringles can. It has a mustard-yellow light on the side, and a tiny square of controls on the top. It sort of looks like a fat lightsaber handle. Definitely a mixture of human technology and something not of this world.

I take it in my hand. "Okay, what do you want me to do with it?"

"Run it over to that silver sedan and tuck it in the wheel well."

"Okay," I roll my eyes and hop out of the car, dash over to the sedan, and cram it up into the wheel well. I turn and jog back to the SUV.

I'm barely eighty feet away when my spider-sense screams at me to duck.

BOOM!

The ground rocks with a massive explosion behind me, heat searing the back of my head and jacket as I drop, throwing my arms behind my head, and breaking into a lopsided run with my upper body bent out of the shockwave that slams into me.

"Jesus CHRIST!" I shriek, crashing into the side of the SUV and struggling to open the door. I am barely halfway in before Jackson smashes the accelerator and whoops loudly with violent joy.

I grasp the handle of the door and slam it shut, sliding across the seat and stopping myself with a braced foot against the console when the SUV shoots forward at break-neck speed. I grasp at the seatbelt and crane my neck to look at the fireball receding in the background. Flames twenty feet high, the car completely engulfed.

I slam my hands over my ears, trying to shake out the high-pitched ringing.

He had just casually handed me a bomb without any warning.

"That was fun, right?" Jackson laughs.

"You could have killed me!"

Jackson wiggles a remote in the air. "I didn't hit the trigger till you were safely out of range! Gimme a break."

"You gotta be more careful, man," Aaron chides slowly. "Seriously."

We drive at a dangerous fifty five miles an hour, zig-zagging out of the low income businesses and into neighborhoods with cars parked on both sides.

"Oh hey, hey, check it out, that's Frank," Jackson jerks the wheel and we nearly jump the curb. "Get 'im! Get 'im!"

Aaron grasps a crowbar out from beneath his seat and puts a stocking cap mask over his head.

"Whoa, whoa," I say. "What are you doing?"

Aaron jumps out of the car, dashes over to the shadowed figure walking down the sidewalk, hands in pockets. He slams the crowbar at his calves, and the man goes down with a shout of fear and pain. He brings the crowbar up and over again and hits him once in the shoulder, checks his pockets, and then runs back to the SUV.

He jumps inside. "Go go go!"

Jackson takes off down the street.

"What the hell was that?" I demand. "Who the hell WAS that?"

"None of your biznass," sneers Jackson.

Aaron gives me a stern look. "An old client turn-sex-offender."

"Really?"

"We took our products back and gave him a good beating when he first got convicted, released, registered and moved back. But we still like to remind him we're around keeping an eye on him. Still mad?"

I sit back. "No."

"Good, then shut up," Jackson snaps. "Even if he wasn't a total scumbag, we reserve the right to do whatever the hell we want without you getting all concerned. You can march straight back to that garage and stay there to die for all we care."

"Fine, fine," I respond tightly.

None of this is fine.

...

Alloys, Allies - Tony Stark

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It's been one of those days.

I come to the lab wearing sunglasses and nursing a cup of black, black coffee.

Bruce knows better than to bother me when I look like this, but that doesn't stop him from working around me. He skirts around the lab, making wide circles around me like a wild animal, working on running a beta test on one of the Wakandan exports sent courtesy of his royal Highness. A new Cap shield work-in-progress, attempting to incorporate a bonding-capability without using artificial intelligence.

When the lathe hits resistance on the vibranium and steel alloy, the machine makes a horrible screech and Bruce immediately shuts it down.

"Sorry," he mutters.

I sigh deeply and take another sip of coffee. "Y'know, if we want the shield to get attached to him, maybe we should just set them up on a blind date."

Bruce whips off his glasses. "Are you going to help, or sit in the corner and heckle me?"

"Heckling is more fun. But help I shall." I sit back in my spinny chair and put my feet up. "Artificial intelligence is something we can program to respond to Captain America's desires only, and respond to those he deems worthy, such as throwing the shield to Nat in the midst of battle and letting her catch it instead of decapitate her. It's part of the coding."

Bruce shakes his head. "I'm not having this conversation with you again."

"I'm not suggesting we Ultron this thing, Bruce," I say tiredly. "Hear me out. What if there is a way to replicate coding biologically?"

"Like opening an iphone with a thumbprint?" scoffs Bruce. "Hello, decapitated Nat."

"No I was thinking like… plant life. Sea creatures. Like an urchin reacts and closes up when it senses dangerous presences."

"Hi, Steve, it's Bruce," Bruce mimics, "We made your new shield out of sea urchins."

"Jesus Bruce. Work with me here."

"I see where your logic is going and it sounds like marine biology. Entirely out of my area of expertise."

"Vibranium inventions from that Princess seem to bond easily enough with their hosts. His Highness just has to think about his necklace and it unfolds a nice suit for him. Hello Kitty."

"Are you jealous of Princess Shuri's accomplishments?"

"No, no. Maybe." I chuck a pen annoyingly across my desk. "I also recognize a valuable asset when I see it. What do you think about hiring a long distance-consultant?"

Bruce sighs thoughtfully. "I'll see if I can get her on phone." He looks at the clock. "When their timezone is not sitting down to a royal dinner."

Bucky Barnes knocks on the door frame and steps in. "How goes the progress?" he asks, immediately holding up his hands defensively. "I'm a human radio, I know. Steve sent me."

"We use intercoms nowadays, Barnes," I say. "What about you?"

Bruce ducks back to work, clearly preferring to leave this conversation to me.

"I wish I had a better report on my end," he says, leaning casually against the edge of the table, crossing his arms over his chest. He looks all too comfortable. "The only thing we've been able to track so far are how many street criminals are getting shot up or beat up by his crew for not paying on time or being generally horrible individuals." He sighs. "The problem with the Vulture is that he's not as big as he thinks he is. Eighty percent of his clientele are just bad guys in bad neighborhoods. His ties to Hydra are small and intermittent. If we're going to follow the line back to the corruption in Shield, it would be easier to have a Shield agent capture a Hydra agent and torture them to give up names."

"Easier but wrong," Bruce hums more to himself than to us.

"I'm certainly not suggesting it," Barnes says quickly. "Not at all. I'm just saying that unless Vulture really steps out of line here - and he rarely does - it doesn't come up on our radar at all. It goes straight to a local precinct and the New York City police handle it. Some of this is only coming back to us because of Roger's guy on the inside feeding him information."

"So you're saying it's too small scale."

"Exactly."

"Trust me," I say, "He'll step out of line as soon as he tries to sell those microprocessors. Meth-Head-Marty on Vinegar Hill can't afford it. Vulture will draw in someone big… we can't miss it when he does."

"I feel that I'm not making enough progress," Barnes admits.

"Progress is hard to define. I make progress every day." I gesture to the lab sarcastically. "In fact, I'm making progress right now." I take a generous gulp of coffee.

Barnes nods, coming to the realization that I'm not particularly in the mood to give him the details he clearly wants about the new shield. "I'll… I'll let him know."

"Whatever happened with the Russo thing?" I nod over to the Dark Elf weapon now sitting, completely dissected into pieces, on another long metal table. "I was curious about who had the guts to use that thing."

"Vanchat," Barnes replies. "He's come over Shield airwaves many times, he's like the Santa Claus of alien artifacts. Vulture never took him out likely because he didn't try to take over the weapon's market. He dabbled in it. The rest of it was… antiquities. Alien rubble. Not only weaponized technology. He'd probably prefer an Asgardian book of magic spells over a matter-shifting ray-gun."

"I wonder who got his stash when he was arrested," I say, looking at him with a hardness in my eyes I cannot mask.

"Nothing was found when his home was searched."

"He probably had a lair."

"Maybe… none were found."

"Oh, it was found all right," I say sullenly. "Found by the wrong guys and cleaned out. Now there is an empty warehouse somewhere with his name on the lease."

Barnes straightens. "Someday the wrong guys will come out. And we will find them. I don't give up easily. Even when I lose."

Bruce glances over, says nothing. But he looks like he wants to say something.

I make a cross over my forehead and chest; a priest blessing his latest endeavors. "Thus makes you an Avenger, my son," I say in a monotone.

Barnes smirks, nods at Bruce, and leaves the lab.

"So did Fury or you pick the name?" Bruce asks. "I've always wondered. Avengers implies we have to lose first. And that we're somehow more righteous for it. Otherwise we'd just be called the Revengers. And what made you decide that? Couldn't you have thought about calling us the Winners?"

"Hey, you know, if you weren't roaming the Canadian wilderness as the friendly green giant at the time, you could have had some input."

"The Defenders would have worked, it leaves the final result more open-ended. The Warriors. EMA."

"What's EMA?"

"Earth's Mightiest Heroes."

"No one wants to call the EMA for a galactic battle," I sigh. "Sounds like we'd do their taxes for them."

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Reader Personal Replies :)

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starnight5: I am SO pleased you are enjoying my story! I realize I have a huge weakness for mafia-esque movies. And movies set in Boston. It was fun translating the idiosyncrasies of Boston criminal underworlds into New Yorker culture. Glad you have joined us on this crazy train!

curry-llama: Peter is actually 18 in my story! :) This is supposed to take place, timeline wise, just after he graduates high-school. There was a very brief moment in his interview where Cap asked him for his age and thought that it was weird he looked younger :) I definitely am writing a little OOC Cap to justify putting Peter in this situation, but I definitely wouldn't make Cap ask anyone younger than "enlisting age" to do anything THIS dangerous! Haha! Cap's got some blind spots in this story, for sure. I also think I have a few hints thrown in at the Netflix/Marvel series, but for the most part I was trying to keep in contained to movie/MCU only. Which was very hard because Wilson Fisk is the most AMAZING mob boss villain ever, and he would give the mobs in The Departed a run for their money! He's probably even a better doppelganger for "Frank" than the Vulture is, to be perfectly honest, lol.

LooneyLovegood1981: Hope you enjoyed their conversation! there's definitely going to be more Stark/Peter interactions in the future. I LOVE their father/son vibes.

NEXT TIME: You won't want to miss this... Peter's very first foray into a real "sale job" from one crime syndicate to a gang leader. Everything goes to shit, and then turns into an absolute nightmare of violence and guilt for Peter Parker.

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