Here is the last of the Interludes! After this chapter we will finally get back to the plot-related chapters.


"Order! Order in the court!"

"This isn't a court Tony."

"Please Tony, I've been in a court for too long for this."

"So has he for that matter."

"This is my table and there'll be order!"

"Can we please just all settle and let him have his moment of delusion so we can all go back to our lives?"

"Loki! You hurt me, right here, in my heart."

"I'll have y'all know I'm missing Dog Cops for this."

"I was going to the museum of Natural Science with Thor."

"You're all so boring."

"I abandoned my pedicure for this Tony, it better be good."

"I was doing some tests at the lab."

"Ugh, fine, fine. Let's start this then people, do you all have a seat?"

"Tony."

"Okay, okay. So as you all probably know, recently, moi – that is to say, me – gained emancipation."

"Yes, we all know, you wouldn't stop pestering us all about it throughout the whole process."

"You hung up a framed copy of your emancipation in each floor."

"I went with you every day to the court as moral support as well as Bruce."

"We all were at you celebratory party."

"Along with most of New York."

"They almost took a couple of us to jail for disturbing the peace."

"You made international news when you fired Clint's birthday arrow out of the tower."

"My poor arrow."

"We got it back didn't we? Okay, okay, no need to glare at me. Okay, so the thing we're all here for is this!"

There was silence as everybody leaned forward to see the small item he was presenting them.

"A driving license? Who in their right mind would give you a diving license of all things?!"

"Hey!"

"We're doomed."

"Why do you even want one?"

"Yeah, you've got the suit."

"Please tell me you're not going to participate in any races."

"Ooooh! I had forgotten about that! That was just so awesome!"

"He almost got killed!"

"What? When did this happen?

"Ages ago."

"Last year."

"Google it gramps, now everybody, let me tell you the true reason of why you're here!"

"There's more?!"

"We're doomed."

"Shush, it can't get worse than this."

"Hurry up, I can still catch the last end of Dog Cops."

"I want poptarts."

Sigh, "Yes, yes, just wait for him to finish."

"Thank you, now. JARVIS!"

The room filled with the sound of a drum roll.

"My newest genius plan! Lady and Gentlemen! Now that we no longer only have one authorized driver!"

"What?"

"Huh?"

"Who else has a driver's license?"

"Since we no longer have only one, but now two drivers! My newest project!"

The drum roll got to its end and trumpets sounded.

"A road trip!"

"A WHAT?!"

"WHAT?!"

"No."

"Tony, no."

"Shush, this is genius, besides, I already got a minivan."

"We're doomed."

"Let there be mercy on our souls."

"Does anybody know how the Hail Mary goes?"

"You'll need something stronger than that."

"Come oooonnnnn guuuuuyyyyysss, it's not that bad."

"I think I've got a spare rosary in my room that I never use."

"Hey! Guuuuuyyyyyss!"

Sigh, "Who's the other driver?"

"That'll be Cap."

"Whaaaaaaa-"

"How?"

"Um, how? I'm pretty sure I don't have a license."

"You drove through battlefields in WWII, you can handle the streets of America. I already called Fury, don't worry, it's all been settled."

"Steve, do something, I'm too young to die."

"I- I have a license?"

"Yes!"

Bated silence.

"Where are we going?"

"We're doomed."


The minivan, thankfully, turned out to be not that 'mini'. Nor a van.

"This isn't a van, Tony", said Steve in his infinite patience.

"Of course it is."

Clint decided to have mercy on Steve, "Tony", he began in a tone that he hoped imitated Steve's, Tony gave him a sideways distrustful look as a reward for his efforts. The ungrateful brat.

"Where do you think the word 'mini' fits with this thing?", Clint continued, ignoring Tony's look.

"Well, it does seem too small for one of those moms that carpool kids to school. Hopefully it'll be enough for us."

"Tony, that thing is big enough to home a mom with a dozen kids", said Clint as he held his face in his hands.

"No way."

Steve was looking pained, "Tony", he tried and stayed silent for a while, "That thing is a home. A mobile home."

"Otherwise known as camper", added Clint.

"Nuh-uh, that's-"

"What's a RV doing in your garage Tony?", asked Bruce as he came out of the elevator, "Where's the minivan? Nat wants to know how much space she has to pack stuff, Thor wants to take food, but I told him we'd probably stop along the way to California each time we wanted to eat."

Tony pressed his lips tightly together, "JARVIS!", he called.

"Yes, Sir?"

"What is that thing, and what is its purpose?", he asked as he pointed at the camper.

"It's a recreational vehicle, otherwise known as a camper, motor home, mobile home, RV, or trailer. Its purpose is a self-contained traveling home. It has basic facilities for cooking, washing, and sleeping."

Tony looked like somebody had told him that Christmas had been cancelled.

Bruce subtlety creeped up to Clint's side and whispered, "He thought that was a minivan, didn't he?"

Clint nodded and whispered back, "I think we sometimes forget that Tony lived most of his life holed up in a mansion at Malibu with no real contact to the rest of the world."

Bruce nodded as he looked with sympathy at Tony, where Steve was patting him on the back and telling him they'd make it work.

Clint sighed. In Loki's words, they were doomed.


The camper, to put it lightly, was gigantic. It had two bedrooms and two folded beds in the living room, so they had space to spare at the end to sleep in. Thor and Loki shared one of the bedrooms while Tony and Bruce shared the other one. Steve and Clint shared one of the foldable beds in the living room while Natasha got the last foldable bed for herself.

This was all decided before they even started with the trip.

Bruce and Thor – with Loki's help – quickly made a list of all the things they were going to need for the kitchen and the two little bathrooms. Steve began making schedules for the bathrooms while they were on and off the road and also made schedules for who was going to ride when – it was decided that they could probably slip Clint in the drive sometimes at night when they were in the middle of nowhere and they were sure there would be no police to stop them.

Tony immediately started to cart off stuff from his lab to hide in his bedroom that he was going to share with Bruce. He had been discreet about it, which tipped Natasha off that he probably wasn't supposed to be doing it, so she told Steve about it and he put an end to it, most likely saving all of their lives in the process from an almost certain fire.

Steve also made up a list of suggested things they should all take with them along with a list of things they definitely shouldn't take with them, most of the latter directed at Tony.

The night before the trip he even made rounds to make sure everybody was packed or at the very least in the process of it. It created a squabble when it was uncovered that Tony had been trying to smuggle a bunch of robot parts along with some chemicals that had the sticker 'flammable' on them.

Bruce was given the dubious honorable title of Tony's babysitter afterwards, his duty being that Tony didn't kill them all while they slept in the camper. Nobody said anything about that fact that Bruce was 11 and Tony 13, but Bruce did look a little smug at the title for a full five minutes before it dawned on him that it wasn't that much of an honorable title to have after all.

The next morning at 5am Steve was running up and down the tower waking them all out. From her bed Natasha could hear how he got into a scuffle with Clint in the floor beneath her, probably having had to drag him out of his bed or something. Clint was a terrible morning person.

So Natasha got up after giving herself 15 minutes extra bed time – Clint was a terrible influence – and went to take a shower and wash her hair. She reveled in her hot water, having doubts of when she was going to have access again to such a commodity.

She was blowing her hair dry when she heard Steve knock at her door and urge her on. She glanced at the clock and saw it was 6am already.

"I'll be ready in a bit", she called and he left her to it, probably thinking of somebody else whose responsibility he trusted less.

She picked a comfortable pair of black pants and the cream colored blouse with embroidery around the collar she had seen the other day at a store and just knew it had to be hers, along with some light brown boots to wear for the day. Sometimes she wondered how things would be if she had still been a spy working for the Red Room. There would be no room of her own, that was for sure, and she particularly liked this room a lot. It had taken her a long time to decide on the curtains, but at the end she had chosen a pair that combined lovingly with the carpet and her bedspread. The bathroom also looked nothing like it had when she got it.

If she had still been with the Red Room there would be no bathroom of her own. Also, no exquisitely combined curtains and bedspread. No nothing really. Except death. Lots and lots of death.

After packing her hair dryer she set to apply her make-up. At the Red Room they had showed them about this, but only enough to enhance their seductive prowess.

Natasha mostly liked the skin colored make-up for a normal day, so different from the deep colors the Red Room preferred.

As she was applying her lipstick there came another series of knocks at her door.

"Natasha! We are supposed to leave at 7!"

She glanced at her clock and saw it was still 6:44, more than enough time for her to finish her make-up, pack it, walk calmly into the elevator, go to the camper and wait for the others to finish for the next half an hour to a full hour.

"Aha", was all she was able to say as she finished the last touches on her lipstick.

"She's 15, let her at it", she heard Clint say from the other side of the door. Ah, he had finally come like he had promised the previous day, if a little late.

After quickly packing her make-up she opened the door and let Clint in.

"Where's Steve?", she asked when she saw he was no longer stalking her door.

"Went to hurry up Thor again. He woke up at 6 and hadn't finished his packing last night. Which one do I grab?", he asked her as he pointed at her bags. There were two black bags along with a lilac suitcase with wheels that Natasha was going to take along.

"Take either of the black ones, don't care", she said as she slid out the handle of her lilac suitcase.

Clint grabbed one and Natasha grabbed the other one along with her suitcase and they were out.

Natasha was seated in the RV at exactly 6:57.

She was the only one.

Clint had gone back to grab more luggage from somebody, their chat group was spammed with Thor asking where certain things were.

20 minutes later Bruce came to join her. They began discussing the roads they were going to take and the places they were hoping to cram into their trip.

By 7:48 Clint came to join them, claiming that he was tired of waiting on Thor and Tony to discover more things they wanted to bring along. Apparently Tony had also never finished packing the previous night.

At 8:06 Loki joined them and fell asleep seconds later on the couch that was a foldable bed.

At 8:18 Thor began spamming the chat group with questions of where Loki was.

At 8:34 Steve came dragging both Tony and Thor into the RV.

Finally, finally, they were leaving.

Tony wanted to be the first to drive, but Steve gave him one glare and then Tony was forced to sit by a sleeping Loki on the couch.

Natasha had shotgun because she had been the first to arrive and had been the only one on time.

Ten minutes later they were stuck in the traffic and the traffic officers were giving the RV stink eyes.

Natasha fell asleep at some point, but at 10:11 she was woken up when she noticed that they had stopped to eat breakfast. They were still in New York. More specifically, Tribeca.

The diner wasn't the best, but it apparently offered bathrooms for customers and Clint had been complaining for at least half an hour that he wanted to go, so Steve pulled over.

"What are we doing in Tribeca?", asked Natasha, because she just couldn't understand how they had still not left the island.

Steve gave her the look of a man that had gone to war and lost. Considering that he had actually been to a war, it spoke volumes of his pain.

They left at 11:17, right after Steve threatened to take away Tony and Clint's driving privileges.

By midday they had finally left the island.


On the second day of the trip they're they were in Philadelphia and Steve was herding them through all the sightseeing and Bruce managed to convince them to go to some museums in the area. They got spotted a couple times and made the news.

On the third day of the trip they made it to Washington. They arrived early so they had the whole day to go sightseeing. Late that night they were kicked out of the Smithsonian and outvoted Steve on staying another day at the capital.

The rest of the trip was filled with less sightseeing and more bickering and getting lost often. While they were in Missouri they let Clint take the wheel for the night and the next morning they were in Chicago. When asked how or why Clint only gave a mumbled reply of winning a racing bet.

It was decided to never let him drive alone at night again.

They had just barely gone back on track in Iowa when Tony took the wheel and the next thing they knew they were somewhere in Kansas and he swore he knew what he was doing, pointed Steve in a direction and told him to continue that-a-way while he took his obligatory nap and then he could go on.

They scoured the map while he was sleeping, but nobody could find out where exactly they were, or on which road they were.

Tony took the wheel again a few hours later and drove right into the night. He was supposed to change with Clint at some point during the night, but they all awoke the next morning when Loki saw they had stopped at a gas station and that all their alarms had been disabled. It was long after they were all supposed to be awake, so they all bounded out of the RV, most still in pajamas and went to confront Tony.

As they did this Loki and Bruce went to the store and asked where the ever loving fuck were they.

Turned out they had just passed Dallas.

Tony was banned from his driving privileges after he explained that he was trying to get them to Houston – a thing that they had discussed before they left the Tower and agreed was too far out of their way so they would be skipping it this time – and Steve took over driving again.

Since they were already so close to Houston and because Bruce mentioned he also wanted to see the place Steve eventually decided to complete the trip to Houston.

The visit didn't last that long, especially after Tony trespassed to get a closer look at their space tech and almost got sent to jail.

They ended up accidentally crossing the border on their way to California and before anybody could understand how that had happened they found themselves driving on the border of the Sonoran Desert and almost upended the RV when Clint and Tony began fighting for the wheel while Steve was asleep. After this, Natasha decided that she had had enough and called the border police, asking them to help them find their way back across the American side of the border.

They stayed the night at an Indian Reservation close to the border once they were back to the American side, which Clint loved and the local economy loved even more.

Next they passed through the Colorado Desert where Clint once again went racing against other vehicles on the road, this time at least with some supervision. And then, at long last, they were in California.

It didn't take long before they were in Los Angeles and after that even less to arrive at Malibu.

Tony twirled around as he stepped into his mansion, showing it off to his friends as they made their way inside.

"This, lady and gentlemen, is my humble abode", he said happily.

Natasha snorted.

"It'll do, I suppose", said Loki as he looked around.

"Hey."


This idea presented in this chapter came to me before I even started to write this story, so I always knew there was going to be a road trip included somewhere in this story XD
Also, I've never been to America, so if I got anything wrong about distances and whatnot, please tell me :)