A/N: The amount of inspiration I have is a lot. This chapter came to me quickly, and oh hell, you guys're gonna like the next one. That's in a non-sadistic way. I think you'll sincerely enjoy it.

Chapter 10: Getting away with murder

In the following two days, the only progress towards catching their mystery hacker had been changing JARVIS's tamper alarm to play You Sexy Thing instead of Ice, Ice Baby.

Whoever they were pitted against, they were good at what they did. Their only lead had been a trap both Loki and Tony had dived into with enthusiasm.

And besides, HYDRA had cropped up again. This time, they'd thought it out, and they'd sent two plain-clothes, completely socially invisible agents into City Hall and gotten what they'd wanted. They'd only been noticed as they left the front doors, and they'd made a successful run for it.

To Tony, it felt like everyone was just getting away with murder under his nose and there wasn't anything he could do about it.
Their next crisis was Doctor fucking Doom attacking a Hammer Industries facility in San Diego.

"Rogers, assemble the Avengers, get in the Quinjet," Fury barked. "We've got an emergency on the other coast."

"Yessir," Steve said, though JARVIS was already gathering the others.

"And Rogers?"

"Yes?"

"Bring Agent Feison," Fury said. "I want him on-site."

"With all due respect, sir, why?" Steve asked.

"We tried to recruit him for a reason, Rogers," Fury said. "His MI6 reports cite him as a tactical and behavioural expert, and I think we could do with that kind of skill set if it's available."

The Avengers were in the jet in an impressively quick time, waiting for Steve to turn up, which was unusual as he was usually first onboard.

The good captain was explaining the situation to Loki, who gathered up his remaining knives with great enthusiasm, tugged on a proper pair of shoes, and followed him onto the jet.

"No," Natasha stated bluntly as she saw Loki enter the jet.

"Fury requested him specifically," Steve explained.

"Not a chance, Steve. He's injured," Natasha insisted.

"I'm fine, and Fury does not expect me to see combat. I am helping you from behind the scenes," Loki said.

Evidently Natasha deemed this a private conversation, because her reply was in Russian. So was Loki's. In fact, as the plane took off around them, they had quite the debate in a stream of fluent Russian that was quite unintelligible to everyone else except Clint, who understood a little bit.

This was until Loki flopped down into a seat by himself with a decidedly recalcitrant look on his pale face and said "We've taken off now, so I hardly see why it matters."

"I swear to god, Loki, if you get within fifty metres of this fight then I will make you a very unhappy man," Natasha glowered, speaking clearly in English so everyone heard.

"I swear to god, Natalia," Loki said, slipping neatly into a mimicry of Natasha's accent. "I do what I want."

For some reason, Natasha started chuckling at that; whether at the statement or the accent, none of them knew.

"I made you laugh. It's settled. I'm going," Loki snorted. "You know, my mythological namesake once made an ice queen laugh by tying a part of his anatomy to a goat and shrieking in pain."

Everyone started laughing at the implications of that statement, breaking the tension from Loki and Natasha's argument.

"Who're you named after?" Clint asked confusedly.

"Loki, god of flame and mischief," Loki replied. "He's not quite as famous as the other deities in that pantheon."

"Never heard of the guy," Clint said.

"Most people haven't," Loki shrugged. "So what are we heading into, here?"

"Right. Team briefing," Steve said. "Doctor Doom is fighting his way onto a Hammer Industries complex in San Diego. Ms Hammer requested assistance fighting him and his Doombots off."

"I wonder what she did to piss Doom off?" Tony murmured to himself.

"Tony is at this point fairly certain that Ms Hammer is responsible for the attacks upon JARVIS," Loki informed the others. "I fear I agree."

"If one of your stray arrows happens to end up in her ass, Clint, I wouldn't exactly be upset," Tony growled.

"Why would she do that?" Clint asked.

"As the daughter of my ex-rival, I'm going to say industrial espionage," Tony said tetchily.

"Well, if we see any Stark tech on her base, then we'll give you a shout," Steve said.

-O.O-

The Avengers were deployed from the Quinjet, leaving Loki on board watching from the Hammer Industries security cameras and studying carefully for any advantage he could point out.

"These are robots," Loki said, which everyone knew. "They have a certain degree of artificial intelligence that affords them the ability to combat you and react accordingly. However, they still cannot match the raw reactive ability of the human mind. Quick attacks, intelligent maneuvers, and do not engage them in full contact battle, as that is what they are clearly designed for."

"Thanks, Loki," Steve said, trying to spend less time up close and personal with the bots.

"Clint, on your six," Loki said, watching Clint whirl around and sink an exploding arrow into a bot on his advice.

Tony was fighting bots, yes, but he had another agenda. The bots had attacked while Justine was in residence, and so she and many employees were hiding underground in a vault. Iron Man had been ordered to secure them, and Tony Stark wanted to find Justine.

Once he smashed through the bots' front line and made it into the heart of the facility, Tony was met pretty much unchallenged except by security doors that allowed him through anyway.

According to his map, he had to go through a production warehouse then down two back flights of stairs to avoid a heavily defended section and make it to where the people - barring security guards, who were fighting the bots - were hiding.

The security door didn't want to let him through into the production warehouse, but Tony convinced it with a missile to the lock.

"Holy shit!" Tony said, looking around the room. There was probably a reason he hadn't been allowed here. "Loki! Switch to my helmet cam - you getting this?"

Most of the room was nothing to report home about - assorted paraphenalia that just seemed to be random junk. But down the other end, a metal skeleton was standing, about twice Tony's size.

Loki did switch his view over to Tony's helmet cam. And consequently Tony heard a sharp intake of air in his ear. "That explains what she wanted from you," he managed to say after a moment.

There could be no doubt in either of their minds that this was based in some way on the beginnings of Tony's Iron Man suit. The shape, design and the circumstances screamed it.

"That bitch!" Tony said. "This a low blow. If she's going to copy my suit, she won't get far. Everyone knows who wears a gold-titanium suit, and it isn't Justine fucking Hammer."

"Examine it closer," Loki urged. "This may not actually incorporate any elements of your suit. It could be unrelated."

Tony moved closer, looking it over.

It was the barest skeleton of a humanoid structure, held together by spittle and prayers, but... it did have some similarities to the Iron Man. The structure of the weight-bearing sections of the hips was chiselled into Tony's brain forever after Afghanistan, and he was staring at a copy of it. There were differences, too - the size of the thing, twice the size of the Iron Man, meant the shoulders and legs were structured differently to bear the weight of such a colossal construction, but enough similarities were there.

"What do you think?" A feminine voice said from behind him.

Tony whirled around to see Justine Hammer standing there, looking wholly unaffected by the carnage outside.

Yes, that was definitely a baby bump.

"I think that you're gonna need a really big guy to run that suit," Tony said.

"Tell her she's a bitch, from me," Loki said into Tony's ear.

"And my driver says to tell you you're a bitch," Tony added.

That statement made Justine laugh. "Oh no, an underpaid employee of Tony Stark happens to dislike me. I don't think I'll ever recover."

"What the hell is this, Hammer? I'm pretty sure if you turn up in a copy of the Iron Man that people will know exactly where you stole it from," Tony said.

"I don't see the Iron Man suit," Justine shrugged. "I see the future of Hammer Industries."

"You took it from me!" Tony said.

"And where's your proof?" Justine said with a nasty smile. "Nothing here is a Stark Enterprises patent. Everything looks fine and above board. I'm just trying my hand in your field."

"Shit," Loki breathed in Tony's ear. "With this hacker we're tangling with, proof may be a little hard to obtain."

Tony switched to internal comms and just spoke to Loki. "She's made minor alterations to the structure, especially regarding size and upper body dimensions. It's not exactly Iron Man, but I'll bet you your perfect white ass it's based on it."

"Perfect white ass?" Loki said, confused yet bemused.

"Yeah, sorry," Tony said, switching to external comms again to say "I'm going to get some proof, you just watch me."

"I wish you luck, Mr Stark," Justine said, mock-humble. "Now, aren't you supposed to be rescuing the poor souls trapped in here? Women and children first."

This last sentence was said with a gesture at her pregnant belly.

"Where are the others?" Tony said.

"Where they should be. In the vault downstairs," Justine said.

"You're getting rescued last," Tony spat spitefully as he moved swiftly across to the stairs at the other end of the room. Switching back to internal comms, this time transmitting to the Avengers, he said "I've got the people secure, and I've found Hammer in one piece. How's it going topside?"

"Nearly cleared the bots," Steve replied. "I don't know what they wanted, but they didn't get it. It's destruction everywhere up here, but without Loki it would've been worse; he spotted where they were coming from. Doom had some kind of portal set up, so we shut it down."

"Gotcha. Send Clint and Nat down here to help me get these people out, if you can."

"Roger that, Iron Man."

"Hehe. Steve Rogers said 'roger that'," Tony snickered.

-O.O-

The decision had been made; they weren't heading back to New York. None of them could be bothered. They'd head over there tomorrow, and tonight, they were taking a break in Tony's mansion in Malibu.

Meanwhile, on the plane, Tony was fretting with Loki (and occasionally dragging in the others) about Justine and her creation.

"The thing that really gets me is that JARVIS said that none of my files were accessed in either tamper. And that can't be right. Some of those elements were definitely from blueprints only I have," Tony said.

Loki frowned, clearly thinking it over. "There are only two true explanations for that: either Hammer did not take your design and created this basic structure herself, but does plan to take ideas from you, or JARVIS is more corrupted than we first imagined."

"I'm guessing the second one," Tony groaned. "This asshole of a hacker must be better at this than we thought."

"If we accept the latter possibility," Loki mused. "Then either JARVIS did not record the entering of the files during the two tamperings we are aware of, or there were more intrusions than we know of and they disabled the tampering alarm."

"Shit. Shit. Shit. This person is a fucking genius. Where did Hammer even find them?" Tony said miserably.

Loki scowled. "I don't like the arrogance of this individual. Their warning was sheer hubris and little else."

"That could work for you," Natasha interjected. "People get cocky, they make mistakes."

"True," Loki said thoughtfully. "Tony, I believe you should increase your security, even if that means completely removing all files of yours from the network. Protecting your assets is ultimately your first priority."

-O.O-

Fury debriefed them all via videoconference, including Loki, who everyone thanked for saving their asses at least once.

Loki may not have been able to fight, what with his injuries, but he could still be involved, and Tony couldn't help but notice the spring in Loki's step for the evening.