Normally, Tony would have blown off Fury's "briefing."

After years of being Iron Man, he had a system. He knew how to track stuff. Weapons, combatants, refugees, radiation, snowstorms, you name it, he could find it. None of his current tools were built or calibrated for what the tesseract gave off, but with Dr. Banner's papers, he could fix that within a week.

He didn't have anything personal against ol' stars and stripes, and he was a fan of Dr. Banner's work. His issue was with SHIELD. More specifically, it was with blindly trusting a mysterious shadow government.

He'd been burned badly enough trusting his own company. His desire to play that game again for infinitely higher stakes was just about nil, and since Fury and Romanoff's opening moves boiled down to lying to him about everything, he had a pretty good idea what would happen if he did.

But these weren't normal circumstances.

He landed on the deck of SHIELD's major budget expense (seriously, where did they get the money for this? Tony knew how much cutting-edge technology cost. He was cutting-edge technology) with a metallic clang. Let a bunch of Fury's goons pick him up in a small, military vehicle? Where he'd ride in the back? And some nerd would probably ask for his photo and throw up a peace sign? Haha. Yeah. No.

"Dr. Banner!" he called, stepping out of his armor and cuing it to retract into its briefcase form. "It's great to meet you." He closed the distance. "Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. Also, I'm a huge fan of how you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

"Uh. Thanks?"

Tony glanced at the other man. "Captain."

The one and only Captain America crossed his arms. "Stark. Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in."

"Yeah, that's about par for the course for these guys."

"No hello for me?" asked the massive pain in Tony's neck.

"I save my greetings for people I actually want to see."

Romanoff rolled her eyes. "Well, then. Gentlemen, you might want to step inside, it's going to get a little hard to breathe. Tony, feel free to stay."

Rodgers peered over the side, at the ocean. "What, is this a submarine?"

"Nope," said Tony.

"Then what would it—Oh, no," said Banner. They steadied themselves as the helicarrier lifted from the water. "This is much worse than a submarine."

"You've got to love the safety procedures, too," said Tony, cheerfully. "Not even a takeoff alarm, huh?"

.

Sadly, Tony didn't get much time to bond with Dr. Banner (short, smart people had to stick together) before he was whisked away to the lab. At this, he was again tempted to ditch Fury. He was confident his help would make the search go faster, even if most of his help would be from the engineering and programming side of things, Banner really was brilliant, and Tony's late-night reading could only do so much—

Point being, Tony didn't ditch.

"So, hit us with it, Fury," he said, throwing himself into the nearest spinny chair. Given that this was also the chair at the head of the table, it might have been meant for Fury, but Tony didn't really care.

"Please," said Fury, voice dripping with sarcasm, "take a seat." He picked a remote up off the table. "Two days ago, a SHIELD research facility was attacked by this man." A picture of a black-haired man appeared on the screen. "Goes by the name of Loki."

"Wait," said Rodgers, "man? Singular? Is he enhanced?"

"Yes to the singular," said Fury. "No to the enhancement. He's an alien."

"What, like from space? Or from Mexico? Because I never bought into the whole—"

Fury sighed. "Yes, like from space. He also attacked a small town in New Mexico two years ago."

"Sweet. And what did he want?"

"The Tesseract." Fury flicked to the next slide of the screen to show a glowing blue cube. "It's also how he reached the facility. The Tesseract is—"

"A door to the other side of space, yeah, yeah, been there, heard that," said Tony. "I'm sure capsicle here knows all about it."

"That's an exaggeration," said Rodgers, "but I'm not surprised the weapon of mass destruction cube is of interest to an evil alien."

"Oh," said Tony, "he has a sense of humor."

"Boys," said Romanoff.

"Dr. Banner is working on finding the Tesseract," said Fury. "The problem is what to do when we find it. Along with the cube, Loki took several of our people." The screen flicked to several portraits. "He seems to have some kind of mind control capability related to his main weapon, which can also produce several other effects." A small video clip of the black-haired man blasting things with energy played. "Using this, he—"

"Wait," said Rodgers, "was that a child on the last screen?"

"Sure was, boy scout," said Tony. "Daniel Fenton, right? Listed as being taken right next to Selvig, Barton, and all your super spy guys in that packet. Only one of them with a social media presence. Real easy to look up, right next to his ghost hunter parents. You want to tell us about him?"

"Just to clarify," said Rodgers, leaning forward. "This is an actual minor we're talking about. He doesn't just look like a kid?"

Tony turned. "Really?"

"Look, the future is weird. I don't know what to expect."

"The Fentons," said Fury, "were brought in as consultants. They have experience with interdimensional portals. Daniel Fenton in particular has experience with portal travel." He flicked rapidly through several slides until he landed on one that showed pictures of Daniel Fenton alongside a figure with white hair. "He is also enhanced. Lab accident, like Dr. Banner." He went to the next slide, which started playing videos of the boy wielding green energy against various monstrous creatures. "Although he has taken some effort to conceal his abilities from others, including his parents. We took that into account when we brought him in to consult."

"Why did you bring him in to consult?" asked Tony. "You expecting him to fight things for you?"

"We brought him in," said Fury, tensely, "because the Tesseract was behaving oddly. We had no—"

"Wait, wait, wait," said Tony, raising both hands, "you're telling us that when you invited the twelve-year-old—"

"He's fifteen," corrected Fury.

"—the prepubescent interdimensional portal expert to your super-duper top secret interdimensional space portal lab to 'consult' with you on your malfunctioning interdimensional space portal, you had no idea that the space portal was going to act like a space portal." Tony spread his arms in a dramatic shrug. "I'm not going to lie and say I'd never get a kid involved in my nonsense, I'm irresponsible like that, but at least I wouldn't pretend I didn't know what I was doing. Just saying."

"You're just upset that he was called in to consult before you," said Romanoff.

"You're missing the important part of this," said Fury. "The boy's powers—"

"Actually," said Rodgers, pointing across the table, "I'm with Stark on this one."

"Oh," said Tony, spinning his chair, "that's nice. Is this bonding? Are we bonding?"

"Are you done?" snapped Fury. "Daniel Fenton is a living weapon of mass destruction. That's before getting into Barton's skill set and Loki's apparent capabilities. We're unsure if Loki knows what he has. From his actions at the facility, he seems to have been after the Tesseract. But Fenton's presence changes things."

"My God, you're really hollow under there, aren't you? No remorse about getting a child kidnapped? Just 'oh no, he's a national security threat.'" He spun his chair to face Romanoff and Rodgers. "Who wants to be that when he says they took the kid's secrets into account, he actually means blackmail? Do his parents know what happened to him?"

"The Fentons have provided us with several weapon prototypes and capture devices intended to be used on the extradimensional entities they refer to as ghosts. These devices should work on Daniel Fenton as well. Don't," said Fury, cutting off Tony, "underestimate him because of his age."

There was a small beep. "Director Fury, sir, the Fentons say they've recorded a blip. It's in Germany."

"Well, gentlemen. I think it's time for you to suit up."