By the time Duo hung up the phone, Tony had increased the speed about as much as Quinjet could take with its current construction. The engines could get them moving faster, but the structure of the jet wouldn't take it.
"What'd you get us to?" Duo asked, having obviously felt the acceleration.
"Mach 2.8."
Being ordered around like some grunt was worth the genuine relief on Duo's face. "That gives us, what, another ten minutes? That's perfect. Thank you." He turned to Hill. "You got this?"
"You debrief," she told him.
"A nuke?" Wilson asked before anyone else can say anything.
Duo nodded and rubbed his forehead. "Yeah. Hydra or whoever triggered its fail-safes, which give an hour before it self-destructs," he said.
"Who puts a self-destruct on a nuke?" Wilson demanded.
It was a good question. Tony knew the answer. "No one does. You put self-destructs on things you don't want people to get ahold of. Tech. Like…" Tony pretended to think about it for a moment. "I don't know, a Gundam maybe?"
"A Gundam?" Peter blurted, sounding somewhere between excited and horrified.
"If you're looking for a prize, look elsewhere," Duo said, unimpressed. "Yes, it's a Gundam. They're nuclear-powered, so when they self-destruct, they are, effectively, nukes."
"And your friend just happened to call you about it?" Tony demanded, getting angry himself. It had been right on the edge of his mind. He just kept trying to rationalize it away, which was, in retrospect, completely stupid because what made more sense: that Duo was just a genius who happened to accumulate enough experience to be entrusted with high priority missions, or that he was trusted with high priority missions because he'd been a Gundam pilot? "Why you? Why not Une? Why not let me in on how to disarm it?"
"He did call Une, who told him we were already en route, which is fucking lucky. If Hydra had gotten into the suit any sooner, we'd be dealing with nothing but fallout," Duo said, giving him a flat and unfriendly look.
"Why not let me help?" Tony demanded, unwilling to back down on this. Duo was the most vulnerable of all of them. He was the one at most risk if he couldn't disable it.
Duo glared. "Because you don't have time to learn L5 starspeak to crack its security. But mostly because it's a Gundam, and I'm a Gundam pilot, and that makes it my fucking responsibility. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
Tony heard a few sharp intakes of breath, but he met Duo's eyes, not backing down any more than Duo was. Yes, it was what he wanted confirmation of. "Why didn't you tell me before?" Tony asked, and he could hear the thread of anger in his own voice. He felt so stupid, and it made him mean and petty because he hated feeling stupid more than nearly anything else in the whole world. Everything, every weird, misfitting piece suddenly made sense if you knew that Duo was a Gundam pilot.
Why would Une trust him with something like the Jackson-Stryker Building? If she was familiar with his capabilities from the war, why wouldn't she have? Especially after three years of having him on the job.
Why would she send a barely twenty-year-old under deep cover? Because he was a Gundam pilot.
Why did she let him design Preventers' security? Because he was a Gundam pilot. She'd fought a war against them and lost. She knew what they were capable of better than possibly anyone else. She wasn't misusing Duo. She was using him exactly as Fury would use such a resource, regardless of his age on paper.
"Why should I have?" Duo asked, crossing his arms.
"I'm your father."
"And that means what exactly to me?" Duo demanded, matching Tony's intensity and growing anger. "News flash—I don't go around randomly telling people I'm a Gundam pilot. Plenty of people would still be happy to kill me for that. Didn't know you'd be safe to tell, did I?" He dropped his arms to his sides in a stance that Tony recognized as ready.
"When were you going to tell me?" Tony asked. "Or were you ever planning to tell me?"
Eyes narrowing, Duo spat, "Fuck you. What the fuck have you done to earn my trust? Sharing half my genes doesn't get you a free pass. Helped clean up your fuck up in Sokovia, so why would I trust you?"
Tony should have been expecting it. Hadn't he been nagging Une for years for the identities of the Gundam pilots to thank them properly for their help in Sokovia? The words still landed like a gut punch, though.
Steve got to his feet, and he was so much bigger than Duo, it should have been almost comical, but somehow, even in the confined space of the Quinjet, Duo suddenly didn't look small anymore. "Hey, Tony has been trying to—"
"Sit the fuck down, Rogers, or I will put you down."
All of Tony's research on the pilots ran through his mind as he watched Duo stare down Captain America himself. It wasn't that the Gundams were that special, he remembered. It was the pilots that were the key. The pilots were what made the Gundams into the weapons they were.
"Don't need any of you to do this. Can do it myself," Duo said, voice even and absolutely sure. "It will be easier with you, but don't need you. So if you want out, tell me now."
"How enhanced are you?" Tony asked, because the only way Duo was that comfortable staring down Steve was if he was confident in his own strength in comparison.
"Enough," was the short reply. Duo's eyes moved to Tony, and they looked black in the low light. "Enough," he repeated, but it felt like a threat. His eyes flicked back up to Steve. "Sit." It was not a suggestion.
The muscles in Steve's jaw tightened, but he looked at Tony for a long moment before he deliberately moved to sit back down, as if he decided he wanted to sit. "What do we need to know?" Steve asked, apparently deciding to focus on the mission. It was probably the best way to deal with it.
Duo watched him as if he were calculating the chances that Steve was going to be a threat, and it sent a chill through Tony. It wasn't until Wilson rubbed his arms that Tony realized the cold he was feeling wasn't purely in his mind; the temperature had dropped in the Quinjet by several degrees—certainly enough to be felt. "If you are still willing to move forward," Duo began as if he didn't entirely believe they did, "nothing on your sides have changed except for Vision. Viz—I need you to get me into that cave and to Altron as quickly as you can. I may need you to cover me while I'm getting into it."
"Altron?" Vision asked, the only one who seemed unaffected by the tension in the jet.
"The Gundam. Its name is Altron."
"We're coming up fast," Hill informed.
"We don't have time to slow down," Duo said, watching the displays. "And that is not five mobile suits," he added, seeing the graphics coming up with eight suits, and that was just the ones he could see.
"No, it is not," Hill agreed.
"All right," Duo said, mind spinning through options. He turned and glanced over his shoulder at the group of seriously unhappy-looking Avengers. "Are any of you going to be harmed by this altitude or speed?" he asked.
Stark frowned. "You're not thinking—"
"There's six of us, and three of you can fly. I don't know how resilient Sam and the kid are at these altitudes and speeds, but if possible, I'd like to dead drop rather than have Hill slow the jet. It's the biggest target the suits have got, but pilots aren't usually trained to target objects moving at Mach speeds."
"We'd need to descend a bit for me," Sam admitted. "Unless we've got oxygen I can take with."
"Kid?" Stark asked, but he was looking at Spider-Man.
"I don't know," he admitted.
"Damn," Duo said, sighing. "All right. Then we're bringing this baby down, but we're not slowing. Hill." He turned and looked at her. "You've got this?"
She gave him a little snort. "Of course, sir."
He gave her a sharp nod. "Okay. Hang on, everyone. This is about to get a little bumpy. I'm gonna bring us down to twenty-thou, but I don't want to go any lower in this area."
"Would you really have been okay jumping from the stratosphere?" Sam asked, sounding disbelieving.
"It's the troposphere," Duo said. "Don't exaggerate. And yeah, probably." He punched the throttle, sending them into a steep dive before leveling out. "Black Death, this is a sweet ride," he added as an afterthought.
"So glad it pleases you," Stark snarked.
Duo turned just enough to catch Stark out of his peripheral, and yup, he still looked pissed off. Something to deal with later. They were on a time crunch. He put the communicator in his ear.
"Hatch down in 20. Get ready," he said, rather than dealing with Stark's attitude. He hit the space above Hill's head and an oxygen mask dropped down. She gave a nod and put it on. "All yours, Hill."
"Take care, Darkside," she said.
Duo grinned, grabbing a pair of goggles. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you like me."
If Hill were anyone else, he would have sworn she would have snorted. "I just don't want to explain you going splat to Une."
The dry delivery surprised a laugh out of him. "That makes two of us," he said, getting up and hitting the button to open the cargo hatch, then pulled up the goggles. "Get this baby out of here. That's an order."
"Yes, sir," she said, but he caught the barest twitch of her lips.
"Sam, you got Rogers. Stark, you've got Spider-kid. Viz—we're going straight for the cave. Disarming the self-destruct is the number one priority."
"Understood, Duo," Vision said, holding out a parachute. Duo grabbed it, slipping it on quickly as the air was sucked out the open cargo door.
He paused and warned, "One last thing—if I go quiet or start laughing, stay away from me." Before anyone else could say anything, Duo took a running leap out the door.
Watching Duo jump out of the back of a jet going at supersonic speeds was not what Tony needed. Thank goodness he accepted the armor that Tony had given him, but it still made Tony's heart jump into his throat to see it.
The rest of them followed, and it hadn't been that long, but Duo seemed much farther down than Tony would have expected.
"Vision," Tony said, and he must have sounded as nervous as he felt.
"I've got him, Mr. Stark," Vision replied, sounding clear in the helmet despite the rush of the wind. He zoomed off to catch up with Duo. By Tony's calculations, they should have nearly five minutes of freefall from this height, but he'd feel much better with Vision keeping near Duo.
Peter whooped in his ear, somewhere between delighted and terrified, which, frankly was about what he should be feeling, if Tony's experience is any judgment. He watched Vision catch up to Duo, but not touch him, and resisted the urge to yell at him.
They were tiny targets, and the Quinjet was moving well beyond the speed of sound, but apparently someone below had seen them because an explosive hit far too close for comfort when they still have a good 20,000 feet left to fall.
"It's like shooting at a fly with a grenade launcher," Duo's voice came across his headset clearly. "It's almost impossible to hit us, but if they get close enough, it doesn't make much of a difference. Split up. Give them less of a target."
"Already on it," Wilson replied, peeling off. Tony himself peeled away to the north, but Duo simply curled into a tighter ball and dropped even faster.
"Viz!" Tony couldn't help but call.
"I have him, Mr. Stark," Vision said, catching up with Duo.
"You should really trust me more," Duo said. "I know what I'm doing."
For some reason, Tony found that both reassuring and terrifying.
Notes:
If at Mach 2.1, they had 45 minutes left, it meant they were still about 1200 miles away. If you kick it up to 2.8, it can cover that distance in about 33 minutes. You still have to account for slowing to actually, you know, land/get out of the craft, so by the time you actually get there, you probably only gain about 10 minutes (possibly less). Yes, I'm a nerd. Yes, I had to make sure the math worked. No, they decide not to slow, but it still takes about 5 minutes to fall from the height they're at.