Adrian felt the hammer tug from the pocket realm he stashed it in and when he let it out it flew straight to Thor. He rolled over in the cots Pepper had brought over once Tony had confirmed that yes, he wasn't dying anymore, but the place was wrecked.
At the moment Adrian was resting his eyes because Tony had gotten a hot tip from Fury that the Russian who had showed up at the racetrack wasn't dead just yet. And worse still, Hammer had broken him out of prison just to teach Tony a lesson.
Adrian was the only one who could hack Hammer's servers and decrypt the notes Ivan left on there...because he was the only one who spoke fluent enough Russian among the three of them. Even JARVIS would take a few hours just to translate half of it.
However after four hours of reading tiny type after being away from his laptop for two years, his eyes needed time off.
It didn't help that his own mother told Fury that he was hacking into their files just to get into Hammer's system and he had been locked out.
Boy had Tony been shocked to find Pepper's new 'assistant' was in fact Adrian's mother. He hadn't strayed towards her ass again since Adrian told him though, so he didn't care that he had technically blown her cover. She would have to ditch the job soon enough anyway once the mess with Hammer was over with, but it was a serious breach of her training.
Natasha was less than pleased when Loki told her. Once this was cleared up Adrian was going to either go through retraining, or take a long vacation just being himself.
At this point Fury was inclined just to send him into Europe to clear out these...Death Eaters...since the only resistance they dealt with had pretty much died off when they learned that their precious Savior, a pure blood magical named Neville, wasn't even the right boy let alone the right material to lead a fight. Voldemort was running roughshod over the European nations and Fury wanted to have him offed before he tried to leave his little corner of the world and gave him a bigger headache.
There was a knock on the door.
"I come bearing food and a migraine reliever," said Loki.
"I smell pie," said Adrian sitting up.
"Tony ordered apple."
"No whip cream on it right?"
"Not since you expressed your dislike of the foodstuff the last time you ordered a milkshake," said Loki.
"Goody."
Adrian all but devoured the pie and the pizza Tony had ordered, mostly because he hadn't had any since leaving Midgard.
"So how goes the hacking?"
"So far I've been able to find that this Ivan character is making drones of your armor. Not very good ones, but they'll work for a military budget that doesn't feel like training people. The problem is that he's got a code built in that will lock Hammer out once it's reached a certain stage and it's going to take me a few hours to figure out how to get past it. I'm a little rusty when it comes to hacking since I've been gone," said Adrian yawning.
"You could always try a more direct route," said Loki around his pepperoni pizza.
"How so?" asked Tony.
"Shortly after he started displaying similar powers to Thor, I noticed that his ability didn't exactly lean towards weather magic like my brother did. I had no idea why that was until I saw how quickly he was able to breach that spirit you call JARVIS. I believe, and this is only a hunch mind you, that Adrian's electrical power is more inclined towards direct interface with technology rather than weather," said Loki.
Which would explain why someone who enjoyed flying so much had as much difficulty controlling a thunderstorm after Thor taught him how to do so. He had barely been able to reign it in before a tornado was formed in the middle of the training grounds.
After that he stuck primarily to enchanting and blacksmithing.
"You think that would work?" asked Adrian, looking pensive.
"I think it's more likely than you being able to duplicate half of Thor's control over weather," said Loki.
"Worth a shot...and it would be interesting to see if it was possible," said Tony.
Tony was all for the spirit of scientific observation...and Loki was more than happy to help out once he realized how much of a child the man actually was. The first time he had pranked Pepper she had slapped him and Tony both.
He liked her already.
Adrian sat in the middle of the floor in the best position he found for reaching into his core. Outside, Loki and Tony were discussing the different sciences that existed in Asgard and Earth.
He took a deep breath...and dropped into his core.
He found the signs of Mjolnir's influence pretty quick...it sparked like a shorted out wire.
Touching it, he saw without seeing the various lines of energy flowing through the house. It took him a second to realize that Loki might have had a very good point about where his real ability lay in concerns to his lightning magic.
He could see every line of wiring in the house.
Reaching out to touch the box he knew housed part of JARVIS' AI programming...and found himself inside a weird cyber area.
"Who's there?" asked JARVIS.
"Holy crap...it actually worked?" said Adrian.
JARVIS sounded rather...startled.
It took Adrian a few minutes to figure out how to get back out...and from there his training regiment took a whole new direction.
"Loki... Have you seen Adrian? He hasn't reported in to the office in two whole days," asked Natasha. If her cover was blown she wasn't going to bother hiding around Tony.
"He's in here. Give me a minute to snap him out of his trance."
Loki tossed in a lit firecracker and was rewarded with his son's cursing in Russian, Japanese, German, French, Latin and English all in the same breath. Natasha raised a single eyebrow.
"What?" demanded Adrian.
Natasha said nothing but grabbed him by the ear and dragged him to the nearest counter where there was a bowl of fruit on the table. One of Pepper's contributions to the house and a vain attempt to insure Tony didn't eat nothing but junk food.
Adrian descended on the fruit like a wolf on a wounded lamb. He was that hungry.
"How long has he been in there?"
"JARVIS?"
"36 hours, fifty-five minutes and thirty seconds," supplied the AI.
Natasha glared at Loki.
"And you didn't think to drag him out sooner?"
Loki didn't looked one bit ashamed.
"He's an Asgardian. He can handle a few days of no sleep."
"And no food or water?" said Natasha irate. Now Loki looked a little embarrassed.
"Now why was Adrian in a closed off room for over a day and a half?" she demanded.
"I found out what Mjolnir did to my magic. I can control technology with my mind," yawned Adrian. Now that he had eaten and drank something, he was dead tired. His head met the counter-top with a thump, followed by a long drawn out snore.
"And what does that mean?"
"The hammer of Thor not only chooses the one to use it, it also imparts a degree of control over lightning. In my brother's case it gave him a greater degree of power over weather. However when Adrian tried to duplicate it, he had mixed results. I merely suggested that his ability lied in another form of electricity," said Loki.
"And that required him being locked in a room for several hours?!"
"The door was never locked. And to be blunt, Adrian successfully hacked into my nearest server on his first try once he knew what to look for," supplied JARVIS.
Natasha blinked. JARVIS was so sophisticated that even S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't bother trying to hack him.
Seeing her son actually drooling on the counter though, her eyebrow twitched.
Terrorist or not, Adrian was going back into basic training before he was allowed on another mission. She didn't care what Fury said, he was too big a liability if he kept forgetting all the training he went through growing up.
Adrian was dosed by Natasha, shipped by Tony and Loki, and given an all-expenses paid trip to the Caribbean by Fury.
It might have seemed like a dream vacation for some, but there was an ulterior purpose for it. Once a year during the summer, S.H.I.E.L.D. sponsored a month long series of seminars that had to be either completed or passed before the agents could return to active duty.
The agents could go to any of them, but they had to get a passing grade before they left.
And Adrian was forced to take half the courses before the month was over, or he was suspended.
"Ow...my head. Who overdosed on the sleeping gas?" said Adrian to himself.
"Welcome!" said a far too chipper voice.
Adrian blearily looked at the woman, then at the area he was in.
"Oh hell no... I've been drafted for one of those mandatory vacation/retraining seminars haven't I?" he asked the woman.
"I have no idea!" she said without changing her facial expression.
"Annoying chipper greeting woman, three people I can recognize off hand that always take the retraining course for a paid vacation...Coulson looking rather murderous at the moment and the fact I'm in a tropical paradise? Please, don't bother trying to break the standard greetings on my account," said Adrian flatly. He had a raging headache.
"Romanov," said Coulson looking rather irritated.
"Phil. If it makes you feel any better I'm fairly certain my mother was the one who drugged and shipped me here against my will."
Coulson thought about that a moment, before he perked up.
"That does make me feel a little better. Shall we agree on a truce?" asked Phil.
"Truce until the mandatory vacation is over? Or you help me escape?"
"Why did Natasha ship you here?"
Adrian made a face.
"Read the note she left and Tony signed with far too much enthusiasm," he said.
Phil took one look at the note Natasha left on him for Adrian to find and said "I don't speak Russian."
"Turn it over. She helpfully left it in English...or Tony had it translated."
"'Adrian, before you burn out from stress I am shipping you to the mandatory vacation funded by S.H.I.E.L.D. with one simple task. Go out and either get laid or find a hobby that doesn't involve work or killing. If you don't, then Loki is under orders from me to bind your powers and dump your ass in the Amazon for an extra month before I put you through my personal retraining course and Clint will use your crow form as target practice. Love Mom.' Oh this is classic. The Widow is telling you to get a girlfriend?" laughed Phil. This was the ultimate blackmail material!
"Figured that would make your day. Though what I have planned for your next birthday should really pay you back for all the pranks I've played," said Adrian.
Yes, he heckled Phil all the time and drove the man insane for laughs...but that didn't mean he hated the man. He admired Phil for putting up with people like him without a word of complaint other than to pile endless mission reports on them and making them clean up after themselves.
Which was why Adrian hadn't been exactly idle while he had locked himself in that room for several hours. He had gotten the hang of his lightning powers three hours in. When he saw the reminder of Phil's birthday after the company retreat, he decided to at least make up for half the crap he put him through.
Phil Coulson was a total nut over the old spy gear. He went goo-goo eyed over all the original James Bond crap from the sixties. So Adrian had spent ten whole hours finding, buying and paying for the restoration of some authentic spy gear that was used before S.H.I.E.L.D. became real. Most of it was decommissioned things from World War 1 and 2, and some of it was from the same group Steve had been a part of before the H.Y.D.R.A. was dismantled. Hell, he even had found some of the same gear Bucky Barnes had used before he went missing, since his body had never actually been recovered.
Phil was sure to love it. Fury wasn't, since he had also managed to get his hands on a picture of the man as a rookie field agent. Carefully hidden under fifty firewalls and so many trojan horses it shouldn't have seen the light of day under normal circumstances.
That would be a fun way to see Phil's reaction to seeing the picture of Fury with hair and both eyes.
Abigail Whistler didn't know why Clint had signed her up for the organization retreat, but she could care less. It was a month of free time on a beautiful beach and all expenses were paid. So what if she had to take a few classes and share a bungalow with someone else? It was a small price for a paid vacation!
Still, she did wonder why her 'older brother' as she liked to think of him had high-fived Natasha, the woman who updated her fighting style and made her much more efficient, shortly after she agreed to go.
She got along better with Clint than she did with Natasha. Hell, even her new code name, the Falcon, was a tribute to the fact that the two archery enthusiasts were like brother and sister.
"Hi. Reservation for Whistler?" said Abby.
"Whistler... Whistler... Here we are! Bungalow twenty-five. Says here that the other occupant has asked for a privacy curtain so you should have something close to your own room, but I'm afraid there's only one shower in it," said the chipper woman.
"That's fine."
"Here's your key, and a list of all the seminars available. Please note you will have to complete at least five and take a day-long exam and pass with an adequate score before you're allowed back into field work. You can complete this exam at any time, and the seminars are available both online and in person. There are no phones or wireless allowed, and the technology you can use are for the seminars only. Also, any and all weapons are allowed, provided you have your ID on hand and a good excuse for use. Are there any questions?" asked the receptionist.
"Just one. Why does S.H.I.E.L.D. sponsor a retreat like this every year? I mean isn't this sort of against the whole secret organization thing they have?" asked Abigail.
The woman's fake smile didn't falter.
"Because the only ones who take this are either dangerous enough that they warrant retraining, the better agents in need of a free vacation, or people who are forced to take some time off whether they want to or not. Anyone stupid enough to attack this many agents who are allowed to keep their weapons and protected by a barrier that knocks out any missiles within a ten mile radius is welcome to try their luck."
Abigail thought about that. Usually the only people forced to come were those who were on the verge of snapping and killing everyone in a rampage. And if they were allowed to keep their weapons... Yeah, she wouldn't be stupid enough to attack this place either. Blade might, if it were full of vampires, but she wouldn't.
Abigail went to her bungalow and checked the door to see if it was unlocked. It was.
She heard the shower running and knew her roommate was already there. She tossed her bag onto the bed and noticed the privacy curtain wasn't up yet. Hearing the water turn off, she palmed her gun just in case she ended up with a total asshole.
The door opened and she turned.
"Shower's free... Abigail?" said Adrian.
"Adrian?!" she said in shock.
Okay, now the high-five made a hell of a lot more sense...and why Clint had been the one to sign her up.
She had heard rumors that Adrian had been rather stressed to the point he had become a liability around the base. She didn't think it was true though.
"What are you doing here?" asked Adrian.
She noticed he was only in a pair of pants, and that he had definitely toned up since the last time she saw him. He had been a bit of a weed before he went on a long term assignment, and now he looked like some sort of body builder who ran a lot.
"Hawk signed me up. Though I should have known he had other plans in mind when I saw him with your mother."
"Mom drugged me and shipped me here. Apparently she and Fury think I need to find a way to relax before I blow something up," said Adrian irritated.
"So...you're my roommate for the entire month? At least I won't have to threaten to kill you like I was planning. Your mom was really good at showing me how to display an intent to kill on idiots," said Abigail.
"I know. So...do you want the privacy curtain up or not? I only asked for it in the event I ended up with Phil or worse."
"I'm fine," said Abigail.
With the privacy curtain up, she wouldn't be able to ogle Adrian.
Her vacation was looking up.