Chapter 9: Making Memberships Official
"Tony, I cannot believe that you actually put that thing in the lobby of the Tower!" Pepper said with a groan. "Why did Fury even allow you to take it away, anyway?" She was staring up at the very tall 'statue' of Thanos that Tony had decided would anchor the look of the lobby in a way that nothing else would.
"Because the wizard who did the freezing is always around, so maybe he figured that, if there were any problems, he could deal with them?" Tony said with a shrug, taking a long sip of the Slurpee that he had gotten from down the road. "Besides, it really ties the whole room together. Why wouldn't the headquarters of the Avengers have one of their enemies frozen in carbonite like Han Solo? It sends a message."
"The message that we're giving sounds a lot like we're Jabba the Hutt," Pepper pointed out to him, crossing her arms over her chest.
"I'm not wearing a Slave Leia outfit, though," Natasha said, coming up behind him. "Even I have my standards."
"You seduce and kill men for a living," Tony snapped at her. "I didn't realize that you could still have standards."
Natasha just shrugged at him. "Fury wants us all to make a meeting in ten minutes," she told him. "Your 'owners' are supposed to come as well."
"I'm never living down the ice cream feeding incident, am I?" Tony asked, looking down in the vain effort of trying to hide the blush creeping up in his cheeks.
"You looked ready to curl up in her lap and have your tummy rubbed, according the Thor," Natasha said to him, smirking. "Well, until Loki mentioned getting you fixed, anyway."
"That really would help kill a lot of my PR problems," Pepper remarked.
"I'm not getting fixed! Stop even saying that!" Tony yelled, shaking. The idea of it was horrifying.
"Don't worry, Tony. No one's taking the venom out of your little viper just yet," Natasha said, pinching his cheek. "I'm going to go tell everyone upstairs." She then walked off to the elevator so that she could do just that.
"Hey! It's not little!" Tony protested, missing Pepper groaning behind him.
OoOoOoOo
Phoenix had gotten Pepper to watch Astra for her while they all attended this 'meeting,' which was actually taking place in one of the more business rooms in Stark Tower, it seemed. She really couldn't imagine just what it was that Fury wanted with them. Maybe he wanted some sort of debriefing. She assumed that the others had given theirs, but she hadn't given one herself. She HAD just given birth, after all. She had been busy!
Loki had actually been the last to arrive, around fifteen minutes late, looking rather smug with himself. Phoenix looked up at him with a smirk, knowing that he had been up to something, figuring that she'd get to find out soon enough just what he had done. Whatever it was, she hoped that it was good.
"Glad to see that everyone has finally decided to arrive," Fury said, face, as always, hidden behind the mask of stern disapproval.
"Because I am sure that Tony is ever at these things on time," Phoenix pointed out. He had arrived only a few minutes before Loki. "Besides, this thing was last minute, or I was only told of it last minute, anyway. Why do you want us here, anyway?"
"Well, if you'd stop talking, I'd like to get to that," Fury pointed out with that one-eyed stare of his. "Sometimes I think I liked it more when you were silent all the time and just stared at people."
"I also frightened most of your agents," Phoenix said quickly. When everyone else in the room looked at her, she shrugged. "They found me disturbing."
"Not sure if that has changed, though," Clint said from his chair. He had his feet propped up on the table, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned back in his chair. "You're still kind of disturbing."
"I'd watch what I was saying if I didn't want my arrows to turn into roses at the worst possible second, Barton," Loki said to him.
"CHILDREN!" Fury yelled. "If we can get back to the matter at hand." Everyone started to settle back down. "Now, in the last several months, Loki has been a tremendous help with any Avenger needs that we've been having."
"I have no idea how you people did without me before," Loki mused. "You people only seem to run around reacting to things rather than any sort of real planning."
"Kicked your ass before," Clint remarked. "Pepper had to talk Stark out of making a memorial out of the holes Banner left in the floor with you." A small fire started in his lap then, causing him to scream and flip out of the chair backward. Luckily, for him, Steve managed to grab a fire extinguisher and put him out before any real damage was done.
Everyone turned to look at Phoenix when Clint was properly put out, as she still had a small flame dancing about her fingers. "What?" she asked. "He asked for it, didn't he?"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Fury screamed. "GOD when did the Earth's mightiest heroes turn into a bunch of bickering teenagers with superpowers?"
"They make it worse!" Clint yelled, pointing at Loki and Phoenix. "At least Tony never lit me on fire!"
"Well that's too damn bad, because I'm offering them both an official invitation to join the Avengers Initiative," Fury said. "So I would suggest learning to not piss them off to the point of one of them setting you on fire!"
Well, that's certainly wasn't what Phoenix had been expecting of this meeting, and it seemed that no one else was expecting it, either, as the room erupted into noise as each member seemed to voice some opinion on the subject. Clint obviously disagreed with the idea of them joining, Natasha was trying to calm Clint, Thor was jumping around like a school girl, which was making everything in the room shake as he was not shaped like a schoolgirl, Steve and Bruce were trying to talk to Fury over the madness about what this would mean and how the public might react when they really got to see two former most wanted list members fully working with them, and Tony wasn't saying anything because Phoenix had reached over to scratch his head and, despite how degrading it was, she did seem to know exactly what spots to hit.
As Fury tried to get the room to calm back down, everyone's phone started to go off at once. Instead of their own individual rings, though, they were all actually using the same ringtone that most people likely wouldn't have on their phones. The song playing was "Cotton-Eyed Joe" by Rednex and, after everyone tried hitting the answer button, silence button, or even off button, their phones wouldn't shut off. Considering the echo that was coming down the hall, it seemed that every phone in the vicinity was ringing with the same tone as well.
Phoenix just started giggling like a kid when she realized that THIS was why Loki had arrived late AND had been so happy looking when he arrived. She was still giggling when Loki scooped her up out of the chair. "Well, I think it's time we take our leave, Fury," Loki said as Phoenix buried her head against his chest to try to muffle her laughter. "I do believe that we'll...accept your generous offer?" He looked down toward Phoenix, who, despite her fit of laughter, managed to give him a nod. "Good! Good day to you then!" With that, both of them vanished.
"That's what you want us to work with?" Clint asked Fury over the still ringing phones.
"Better that this is the worst that either of them want to do to us, even if it is annoying as hell," Fury said, turning to walk out of the room.
"I can't believe we all just got Loki'd like that," Tony grumbled, fiddling with his phone for a second before slamming it down on the table. "I can't even turn the sound off!"
"Seems like even the favored pet cannot escape the pranks," Clint said, seemingly getting some sort of satisfaction from that.
"Oh hell, I could have told you that!" Tony retorted. "I'm pretty sure the both of them get off on tormenting me in some way."
OoOoOoOo
After they teleported away, they made a quick pit stop to pick up Astra from Pepper (not explaining why they had left the meeting early), before heading back to their apartment. Thankfully, they had gotten a neighbor to feed Socks, so he was fine and dandy when they came through the door.
"Sorry we haven't been home, Socks," Phoenix said, leaning down and petting the black cat. She then slowly picked him up and lifted him so that he could see Astra, who was being held by Loki. "Now, I have someone for you to meet. This is our daughter, Astra."
"Phoenix, I'm not sure that Socks can exactly understand what's going on," Loki admonished.
"Maybe he's something more than a cat," she said with a shrug. "I still don't know where he came from."
Loki leaned forward and studied Socks for a moment. "He doesn't feel like a familiar or anything," he said, although he was obviously more humoring her than anything else.
"Even if he's a plane old cat, we still have to introduce him to new things when they come into our home, and that especially includes our daughter," she pointed out. Socks leaned over slightly and sniffed the baby, then licked her face before leaning back, losing interest fairly quickly. "I'll take that as a good reaction," Phoenix said with a grin, setting Socks back onto the floor. The cat rubbed against her leg once before wandering away.
She then took Loki by the hand and led him and the baby toward the baby's room. She cooed at Astra after Loki set the baby in the crib. "Do you think she'll be alright in here on her own?" Phoenix asked.
"Of course," Loki told her. "That's what we have these things for, anyway," he said, picking up one of the baby monitors. "She cries, and we can hear it no matter where we are in the apartment." He smiled and took her by the hand, letting the baby sleep in her bed for the first time.
"Are you sure that joining the Avengers full time is the right thing?" she asked him as they walked back to the living room. "I mean, we did try to kill them once or twice."
"Can't do the same thing forever. Then they might expect it," Loki said with a grin.
Phoenix sat down on the sofa, watching Loki as he headed into the kitchen to make drinks. "Alright, we have to keep them on their toes, but we can do that without being fully with them, can't we?" she asked. She had agreed to it earlier, but she wanted to know why he was agreeing with this himself.
"Actually joining with them does come with certain perks," Loki pointed out. "Plus they do make good meat shields in case things ever come to that." He grinned. "Plus Stark does make for a pretty good pet. Maybe we can even get the rest of them trained."
"I'd prefer Rogers in a kennel," Phoenix said with a pout. "And Barton is still grumpy from the whole 'you took over his mind' deal. You'd think that he would learn to forgive and forget after a while."
"Eh, he'll get over it eventually, and at least Rogers would make a good babysitter," Loki explained.
"He does seem like the type that would be good with children," she conceded. Maybe she could just treat him like a drone or something. That could work!
"See? We can make this work," he said, bringing her a drink and sitting on the sofa next to her. "Besides, we can always just outlive them and then take over the world from the inside," he suggested. He pulled her over closer to him, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. "It's nice to have you alone again, and not in a tower mostly full of idiots."
"Mostly full?" she asked, tilting her head back and looking at him with a grin.
"Banner and Stark aren't complete idiots, I suppose," he said with a slight shrug. "Good enough to at least make pets or minions out of."
"Pretty much my opinion on the matter," she said, moving slightly so that she could kiss him.
