Chapter 14: The not so calm before the storm

I tailed it out of that room like my pants were on fire. Never would have thought I would catch a glimpse of shock on Fury´s face. Heh. That whole thing, where they had suspected me of being Ironman, made it even better. Ha, putting a tech-illiterate like me in that deathtrap - I mean masterwork, was just asking for trouble.

I was mildly surprised when no Shield crony followed me for a questioning, but Fury was most likely just waiting for an opportune moment.

I marched into the lab with a big grin on my face, that was finally fully visible for the cameras. Tony raised an eyebrow, looking sceptic.

"I got Fury to look genuinely surprised.", I declared triumphantly. Tony hummed indulgently, nodding like I had done some great deed. Which I did. He was just jealous.

Bruce looked up from his desk confused. However, he was quite used to my more inane eccentricities, so he just shrugged and turned back to his work.

Pouting at being underappreciated, I watched the two scientists working with the scepter and some equipment for some time. I noted that Tony spent as much time on needling Bruce as he did on the actual task. Typical.

I cleared my throat.

"When you have your measurements? Tell me. I need to get that thing contained or it will start influencing anyone in the vicinity. And not for the better."

I made eye-contact with both of them to make clear I was serious. Bruce jumped back as if the thing had burned him and Tony mustered it as if it had personally insulted him. Come to think of it, his arc reactor should give him some more leeway with the infinity stone. Still, if they needed to find the space stone through the staff, then by all likelihood the brainwashed were using the same connection to find us. Maybe they had already enough time to get our location and flight path, but if I could minimize a risk so easily, I would.

With impeccable timing the doors opened and in came the good Captain. He nodded at me in greeting. With a mild frown he came to stand in front of the table and looked at the two scientists, standing back from their workspace. Of course, Tony couldn´t stand still and started to wander around again. Steve was in the process of asking for an update when Tony picked up a probe and poked Bruce in the side with it.

I facepalmed. Was this the universe punishing me or did Tony just have an impressive talent at pissing people off. Probably both. Maybe there would always be some tension between Cap and Ironman.

"Hey! What are you doing?", Steve exclaimed with a full-on frown now. Tony waved him away.

"Just testing. Brucie doesn´t mind.", replied Tony nonchalantly. "Do you?"

He turned to Bruce, who looked like he really wanted to be back in Kamar-Taj right about now. Bruce sighed.

"I don´t. I wouldn´t have come here, if I couldn´t handle pointy things.", he tried to reassure Steve before turning to Tony. "Please, stop calling me Brucie."

Tony´s innocent face of "Who, me?" made Bruce sigh with defeat and me suppress smirk. Steve was less swayed by the byplay. He righted his posture and I winced, preparing for a lecture.

"This isn´t funny, please concentrate on the problem Mr. Stark. The tesseract-"

"Ah, yes, the Tesseract. Do you think it´s over when we get that that back? Why do think Fury is so hush-hush about this? How am I supposed to solve an equation without having all the variables? It´s bugging me.", Tony interrupted him.

"You think there is something Fury isn´t telling us?",

Steve looked hesitant to believe Tony.

Tony shrugged.

"Fury is a spy. He´s the spy. His secrets have secrets. It´s bugging him too.", he threw out while starting to munch on dried blueberries. Bruce ducked down to avoid the attention on him. Steve glanced at him on question.

"Doctor?"

"Oh, him you address as "Doctor", hm?", I thought with some pettiness. I sniffed and crossed my arms.

Bruce sighed again and took off his glasses.

"A warm light for mankind – that was Loki´s jab at Fury about the Cube."

He hesitated.

"I heard it.", Steve prompted him to keep going.

"I think that was meant for you."

Bruce pointed at Tony, who gave him access to his blueberries in a manner that reminded me of someone giving their kid a treat for getting a test answer right.

"Stark Tower was all over the news, Loki surely knows about it."

"The Stark Tower? That big, ugly-", Steve questioned, surprised. I cleared my throat and stepped up to the table as Tony looked disapprovingly.

"Not the point! Also, you still have to catch up on nearly seventy years of architectural development before you should start insulting buildings in front of their owners."

I gave Steve a relatively mild reprimanding glare, considering I had some emotional attachment to that tower now that I owned a significant share of the company it housed. He blushed at that and gave me a sheepish look.

"The tower is powered by an arc reactor, a self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for, what, a year?", Bruce went on.

"It´s just the prototype.", Tony said. Then he turned to Steve. "I´m kind of the only name in clean energy right now."

"Which begs the question- if Fury wants to use the Tesseract as a power source, why not bring in the biggest name in clean energy? The person, who works with an element that was designed on the basis of the Tesseract. Hm?", I contributed, ever pleased to shit on Shieldra.

"I should probably look into that once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of SHIELD´s secure files.", Tony said, casually sauntering up to another monitor and then getting out his phone.

Immediately, I could see the alarm bells in Steve´s head go off. I looked to the ceiling praying for patience. Sigh.

Theoretically, it hadn´t even been necessary for him to plant a bug into the system. I could have just asked Ree. But I didn´t really want anyone to know about Ree´s full function. Let Shieldra presume I get all my info from Tony.

"I´m sorry. Did you just say…", Steve began, bewildered.

"Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge.", Tony answered, not even looking up from his screen. "In a few hours, I´ll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide."

He was standing directly in front of Steve now and brought up his bag of snacks.

"Blueberry?"

When Steve just looked at him for a second, he continued.

"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome."

Steve huffed and retorted: "I think Loki´s trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don´t stay focused, he´ll succeed. We have orders. We should follow them."

Knowing that last comment would set Tony´s snark off again, I stepped between the two.

"That is all well and good, but blindly following orders from a government agency, that is so secret, it never gets hold accountable for its mistakes and whose real goals we don´t know is equally dangerous. You know that Cap. And two things can be true at the same time."

I shrugged and took a step back.

"Loki, of by his own free will or not, is trying to start a war and to that respect is sowing discord in the opposition, us. That doesn´t make any accusations against Shield any less true. They are shady as shit, pardon my language."

Tony snorted at the last part. He heard me say a lot more shit than that. However, I was currently trying to not overwhelm the poor captain with the numerous modern sensibilities going around in the room. Picking your battles and all that. We could work on the swearing later.

Steve seemed to be thinking. Tony popped another blueberry in his mouth. Cap sent him an irritated glare and looked to the side.

"Just look for the Cube."

With that he made his way out of the lab.

I looked after him, my gaze moving downward and landing on his behind.

"Damn, that ass though.", I said quietly, cocking my head and staring absentmindedly. The Ass of America, Ladies and Gentlepeople.

I heard Bruce choking out a laugh in the background. Tony looked unfazed. He shook his blueberry-bag and held it in my direction.

"Blueberry?"

I perked up.

"You know, I never had dried ones, just all manners of fresh or bottled ones.", I said. I took some and analyzed them curiously. I threw them in to my mouth. Hm, better than raisins for sure.

"Hm, not bad. Fresh ones are better though."

With a grin I took out the fresh blueberries, that had been waiting for me in my fridge at home and began snacking. Tony rolled his eyes.

"Show off.", he murmured.

"Blueberries?"

While Tony began busily decimating my blueberry storage, I turned to Bruce.

"Seriously, how long do you still need the staff functional like that?"

Bruce grimaced.

"If your containment is going to mess with the staff´s output, then ideally, we would take continued measurements until we have a good match without the interference. Otherwise, we could end up being way off."

"Hm" I crossed my arms, dissatisfied. This wasn´t quite going as I had hoped.

Still frowning, I set up a simple rune circle, that would minimize limit the staffs influence to a smaller radius.

After watching the scientists work for a good while and deciding that this was boring, I got up.

"´M gonna check on something, don´t wait on me!", I called over my shoulder as I left out of the door.

I hadn´t made it two steps before Hades came up, startling me. I chuckled lowly. I petted my anxiety-ridden hood and praised it quietly for doing a good job at controlling itself while in uncomfortable situations.

Whistling (and invisible) I made my way to Loki. I wanted to do a proper scan on him and check my work. Maybe I would strengthen the wards zapping away at the mind control. I had been worried about them also taking away from Loki´s own magic and him noticing. By now though, I was confident that my rune circles would hold up.

And -because the attack on the Helicarrier seemed inevitable now- I wanted to add some defenses against outward attackers. In case Loki´s fellow brainwashed minions got tired of waiting for him.

Loki´s head snapped up to look at the open door when I entered. His eyes jumped from place to place confused. Well, that answered the question of him being able to see me through Hades' spell. He settled down again when nothing happened.

I took a moment to examine him. He didn´t look that good. There were no visible injuries. He just looked like Tom Hiddleston had been kept awake for a weak without food or a shower. And considering his constitution and magic it probably took a lot to get him to look like that. His movements were also increasingly erratic. Most likely because the control over him was weakening and his own mind was able to fight against the foreign influences.

Like a few hours before, I hovered in the air and concentrated on my runes. I analyzed which were working and which weren´t, silently thanking a particular sorcerer a few centuries ago, who had been frustrated at not knowing how effective each rune was and subsequently spent the rest of his life finetuning methods at measuring magical output. 10 out of 10, my favorite author. Has spared me so much time, honestly.

Thankfully I could do this without lightening the whole room up like it was Christmas, because I would not have been able to work in peace otherwise. I started sketching out amendments with Ree.

I absentmindedly noticed Black Widow enter and doing her whole interrogation spiel with Loki. I huffed and sped up. My time was running out.

As Natashalie speedwalked out of the room to pointlessly antagonize poor Bruce (seriously, her forced calmness and insistence in the film had made even me nervous) I threw up my changes. More magic syphons, mind control syphons, plus a whole bunch of calming sequences from my work on the Hulk collars. That should keep him out of trouble. I didn´t bother with making them invisible this time in case some of the brainwashed agents would try and free Loki, who was incased in a huge swirling and glowing globe of runes. Looked pretty cool, if one was allowed to say so about their own work.

The protection against any outsiders weren´t even half as impressive as the ones against Loki, but they didn´t have to be. Well, except if Thanos had send along another little godling, but then I had bigger problems to think about.

I ignored Loki´s startled shouts and hurried back to the lab. Where everyone was already screaming at each other.

Great.

All these responsible adults and they all lose sight of the goal in favor of throwing petty insults at each other. Hah, responsible adults, as if.

"…with something. A nuclear deterrent.", were the first words I heard Fury say upon entering.

"Bull-shit!", I declared loudly, clapping my hands to get them all to focus on me. Suddenly appearing out of thin air ruffled a few feathers but I ignored that before certain people said certain things that would get me to snap at them. (Fury´s excuses, Thor looking down on "mortals", Steve taking jabs at Tony, …)

"And this is why I wanted to do this."

I marched to the staff and slapped my incasement on the mind stone before things could go further south. Immediately I could feel the energy of the room go down. I frowned at my rune circle from before. I hadn´t really done as much as I had hoped.

"That is what you get for holding impromptu meetings in a room with something that messes with your mind."

I gave everyone in the room the stink-eye in turn. Then fished out a bracelet with runes and handed it to Bruce. A mini version of my Hulk collar.

"As a precaution.", I explained. He took it gratefully; the whole mind control thing had visibly freaked him out.

"Oh, and no operating of heavy machinery while you are wearing that."

He gave me dopey smile and a thumbs up.

Maybe I had to lower the intensity a bit. At least it worked fast.

I turned to Fury while Tony stared at Bruce in fascination. I knew I would be getting requests later.

"I know you are a spy and lying is essential in your job, but you aren´t doing yourself any favors here. This group was your idea and until now you haven´t given them any reason to trust you to give them any good info."

Fury scowled and opened his mouth to counter.

"Ah, ah, ah, I´m not through with you yet. You knew about Aliens for way longer than you told any of them, for decades in fact. And you also had your nuclear deterrent for that long. A certain pager that calls one of the most powerful people in this universe, that has also coincidentally served in the U.S. air force. Sounds familiar? Yeah, so don´t give me that bullshit."

I grinned at him with Schadenfreude as he looked at me pissed as hell. He most definitely did not like having his secrets out in the open.

In the movie this had just been a plot hole. They hadn´t written Captain Marvel yet and later you could just explain it away with Fury being paranoid. Didn´t make his dialogue and character in Avengers any less retroactively shitty.

"How the hell-", he started growling.

"As if I would tell you. Remember what I told you about taking care of any Aliens stopping by at Earth? You just made my job that much harder and therefore I don´t have that much patience with you."

I took a deep breath and focused on the rest of the room. Being in the middle of Shieldra for so long was making me itchy. I held my hands up to halt any objections.

"Now, Shield is shady as shit. Not a surprise. They fucked up. Also, not a surprise. Let´s focus on Loki´s plan of Banner hulking out being likely just a distraction for an attack by the brainwashed agents, okay?"

Natasha was looking at me intensely at the mention of the agents. Steve was looking slightly scandalized at my language. And Thor just seemed to take my word for it, nodding earnestly. Fury was still scowling.

"And we don´t have to worry about Loki anymore, I strengthened my wards. He should be able to sleep through earthquakes by now.", I added, purposely just when Fury opened his mouth again.

Pissing him off was dangerous game, but also so damn satisfying.

Before I could antagonize the superspy anymore, the monitor in the back of the lab beeped.

"We got a hit.", Bruce blurted out, still remarkably zen with his new accessory. He went over to the program, and I braced for impact. This was one of the cues I could remember the best.

And like clockwork, the astonishment on Bruce´s face at finding out the portal would be opened above Stark tower was followed by a huge explosion that hit the ship. Everyone was thrown in all directions and chaos would ensue.

My priority was catching Bruce. I didn´t know how effective my armband was, so no taking second chances at that front. I took a good look at him, ignoring the chatter on the comms Ree was patching through, until he gave me thumbs up, less dopey, but not strained. I nodded and set him down next to a trapped Black Widow.

I waved a hand and freed her. Telekinesis wasn´t my best skill, but I was more than adequate enough for this.

Without hesitating, I opened a portal to the deck of the Helicarrier and went through. I took a moment to orientate me, but I spotted the intruders almost immediately. They had landed and were on the way to what Ree told me was a part of the air ventilation system.

Hades snapped up in preparation and I took out my collars. I flew up behind them and had the first three on the ground before they even knew something was wrong. Five left.

When they turned around and trained their weapons at the empty air in search of a threat I quickly went through a portal and appeared behind Hawkeye, who had been leading the group.

Astonishingly, he seemed to have seen the tell-tale orange sparks and was turning around but he wasn´t prepared to fight against someone invisible. I pivoted around his drawn bow and slipped a collar around his neck.

Another two were down before they could orientate themselves. The last two were taking shots at me, but a simple teal shield and an orange whip were enough to take care of their resistance. Two collar later I was surrounded by laid out bodies.

I blinked. Well, this was easy? The assault in the movie had looked a lot more dire, but having the Hulk out and about would do that to you.

I took a closer look at the sleeping attack force. Everyone had helmets on with some sort of breathing system, which I had seen a lot on the air carrier. Only Hawkeye was going without. I raised an unimpressed eyebrow. Hm, not my problem.

I dumped them all on teal-colored stretchers. My constructs were almost second nature, so I preferred using them over longer applications of telekinesis.

Humming I let Ree direct me to the med-station, while the rest of the crew hopefully solved that pesky engine problem. Thanks to my earlier explorations, I found the med-bay fairly quickly.

While transferring my unconscious load onto beds under the frazzled advisement of some poor on-board medical personal, I pondered if Shield had made the plans of the Helicarrier extra confusing on purpose. Probably.

After a small magical scan, I slapped some simple runes on the forehead of each of the brainwashed people and explained to the doctor that they should be fine upon waking up. I recommended therapy though. Nothing like not being in control of your body to traumatize you.

When I opened the door to go look for the others, Natasha stormed through with wide eyes and slight limp. I pointed over my shoulder at Clint´s bed and said: "He´s alright. Should wake up soon and as good as new."

Her face relaxed and she gave me nod while making her way over to her unconscious friend.

"Thanks.", she said with a small smile when she passed me.

"Just make him see a therapist, okay?", I called over my shoulder as I left.

I shook my head. She got that news fast.

Hades popped up when we crossed the way of multiple hurrying agents. There was still a lot of chaos going around.

Coming up to where Ree had been leading me, I sent a message to Logan and Summers to get the team to the area around Stark tower as soon as possible.

Stalking through the doorway to a still somewhat busted looking Ironman suit, a brooding Steve-Thor-combo and an armband-less Bruce, I put on a smile.

"So, we are going to New York or what?"

Next chapter is the battle of New York and the last vestiges of recognisable movies dissapear. I made a lot of notes so I don´t forget villains or plotlines, but we will see.

Right about now I miss exstensive tagging, because then I wouldn´t need to warn anyone about this: MC is not the most moral, he´s very pragmatic. He may have a moment where he feels bad (see: beginng of last chapter) but that doesn´t mean he won´t kill or let innocents die if he thinks it has a positive effect. This warning may seem to be coming from somewhat left field, but the next few chapters explain that more.

Still, finally we will actually see something of that Plan™ that MC has been talking about a few chapters back.