Hello, all! Sorry for the late update; my family just flew in to come and visit! It's been a while since I've seen them... Anyway, here's the next chapter! But before it begins, a huge thanks to Richelle Manuels, Marvel18, D, jewels1798, and loreleisand94 for their amazing reviews! Keep them coming, people, your feedback means the world to me! And a huge shout-out to my followers and favoriters... guys, I have over 100 favorites and 175 followers for this story. That's incredible... I never thought I'd get such positive feedback. So seriously, a HUGE thank you; you're all amazing, go eat some chocolate and do fun things!
On another note, if anyone is interested, I have a poll on my profile... feel free to check it out!
Now, I've had the idea for a prank war for a while... but a big thanks to D for confirming my certainty that this chapter would be a good idea... ;) Have a MARVELous day, everyone!
A week after Pietro took Esca to see the Statue of Liberty, things began to get messy in Stark Tower. The reason? A full-fledged prank war had been declared, and no one was safe.
It had started simply enough—Tony hardboiled all the eggs in the refrigerator so that Esca couldn't make omelets for breakfast one morning. She, to say the least, was exasperated, and the Avengers had to settle for cereal for breakfast.
Hearing what Tony had done, Pietro decided to avenge Esca, as she preferred not to encourage his childish games. Though she told him not to do anything stupid, he chose to ignore her, and thus crept into Tony's room, emptied all his bottles of shampoo and refilled them with syrup, and waited.
He and Esca had a good laugh when Steve had to run to the convenience store for a bottle of shampoo and extra-strength conditioner.
After this escapade, Clint apparently decided he was not to be left out, and so he pulled a prank on Pietro that involved making a giant vat of Jell-O and stuffing Pietro's favorite running shoes into it.
This, of course, led Wanda to levitate Clint's bow and arrows from the ceiling of the common area, which had very tall ceilings.
Naturally, Natasha soon retaliated by pranking Wanda, and Vision got back at Natasha for Wanda, and Steve got back at Vision for Natasha, and Thor punked Steve for Vision… The prank war kept going on and on, and while the pranks were nothing lethal, they were steadily becoming more and more irritating. Oftentimes they were held in the common area, when Esca was trying to cook—indeed, three days later, she was ambushed by Steve, Clint, Tony, Thor, and Pietro as they all shot her with silly Nerf guns that Tony had stashed in the Tower somewhere. Most of the darts ended up in the goulash she was making, which aggravated her something fierce.
After this incident, Esca called upon Wanda and Natasha to form a truce with her for the sake of getting back at the men. They knew that whatever they did had to be good… and they figured it would be.
On the seventh day of the prank war, Pietro staggered in the room stiffly, covered in something that Esca figured was baby powder while she and the other women were in the kitchen. She was making personalized desserts for everyone as Esca sighed and inquired, "What happened?"
"Stark… I got in the elevator and all I remember is a giant white cloud surrounding me… and he was laughing."
Esca sighed, trying to restrain from both grinning and rolling her eyes. "I told you not to retaliate the first time! Look what you've brought about because of your tomfoolery."
Pietro shrugged, then muttered, "I'm going to take a shower…"
"Assuming you don't get ambushed again," smirked Wanda.
"Better check your shampoo bottles!" warned Esca, remembering the prank Pietro had played on Tony.
Once he was gone, she sighed and looked to the other two. "So who are we targeting for this prank?"
Natasha smirked. "I call Clint."
"I want to target Vision," said Wanda.
"Good; then I'll get Pietro," confirmed Esca. "But I just want to make sure none of those three have any allergies at all with this stuff, because I don't want to have anyone get sick in the name of a stupid prank war—"
"Relax, Esca," laughed Nat, putting her feet up on the counter. "They'll be fine. None of them have allergies."
"If you say so," countered Esca with a shrug. "I just want to make sure…"
The other two women managed to convince her to let go of her worries, and the rest of the afternoon was spent relatively quietly. While Esca was finishing off the three lemon meringue pies they'd need, the trio heard Clint scream from somewhere upstairs, "AH! SNAKE!"
Promptly following Clint's shriek was a roar of laughter, probably from Thor, based on how deep the laugh was. What followed that was a strain of curses that made Esca put a hand to her forehead.
It took another three hours, but finally, the girls were all set up. They had the real dinner and set it aside so that the men wouldn't see it, and they had the other dinner that the men would remember for hopefully the rest of their lives…
At 6o'clock PM, Esca strategically set out a plate of caramel apples. She knew that Tony and Clint would be down at any moment, seeing as they were usually the first ones down for dinner. Esca's heart was beating abnormally fast, seeing as she couldn't wait to pull the prank but she also felt guilty about it already.
Only five minutes later, Tony's voice declared, "My, my, blondie, what have we here?"
"Caramel apples!" she declared, turning around and taking great care to put on a pretty smile. "I've never made them before, but I found a recipe on the Internet. Want to try one and give me some feedback?"
Tony grinned and rubbed his hands together. "Don't mind if I do!" With that, he plucked the biggest, fattest "apple" up and took a ginormous bite out of it.
His reaction was instantaneous. His eyes widened and he spat the caramel onion out of his mouth, gagging. Meanwhile, Natasha, Wanda, and Esca were all positively dying of laughter as he threw the onion in the trash.
"The hell?!" he gasped, barging past Esca to grab a glass of water—or beer, as it turned out. He quickly drank half the bottle before glaring at Esca and declaring, "That was mean."
"This is war," she replied, shrugging innocently. "I wanted omelets on Monday morning, and you wanted a caramel apple just now, but we can't all get what we want, can we?"
"Tell him, girl," smirked Natasha.
Tony just sighed and ran a hand through my hair. "I suppose I should've expected this."
"Don't tell the others," said Wanda. "Let's see if any of them fall for the trick, too."
Unfortunately, the other men didn't want to spoil their appetite before dinner, and they refused the caramel onion. Despite that, there was still plenty of time to get them back, and hopefully inspire them to quit leaving booby traps around the Tower once and for all.
Once everyone was seated around the table as always, Esca brought in the bottles of Coca-Cola that she'd prepared. While the men didn't know it, she and the other women had strung a string through a Mento and twisted the caps on before using scissors to cut the wire from the outside. This made the bottles of Coke look normal—but once they'd be opened, chaos would ensue.
When the men raised their beverages to toast everyone's success at the prank war, Natasha, Wanda, and Esca all sprinted away the moment they opened the bottles.
SPLISH!
Six bottles of soda simultaneously exploded, practically making a fountain in the air. The men all screamed in shock as the women lost it—when they looked back, there was soda everywhere. In Thor's hair, soaking Tony's shirt, in Steve's nose… The six men glared at the women before grunting and groaning about how they were going to regret this.
"I promise," choked out Esca through her tears, "That the rest of dinner is normal. I promise."
Although Esca had just pulled two pranks—in Tony's case—in a row, the men seemed to think her word was sound. Seeing this, she went and got the real dinner so the Avengers could eat.
Despite the sticky beverage still dripping from the table, everyone seemed to enjoy the dinner. There was talk about forming alliances, forming clans… Esca tried to ask if maybe they'd consider actually stopping the war, but the others just looked at her as if she was crazy.
With a sigh, she muttered, "I thought not." It appeared she'd have to resort to the big guns.
Once dinner was over, she grinned prettily and exclaimed, "Now, I've made an arsenal of desserts, so Natasha, Wanda, if you could help me bring out the first type I made, please? Your help would be greatly appreciated."
This was the signal. Though Natasha had an excellent poker face, Wanda struggled to keep her grin off her face. Luckily, the men didn't seem to notice, as they were so enwrapped in their own thoughts about who to prank and how that they weren't focused on the threat at hand.
"Ready?" whispered Esca as she armed the two with the lemon meringue pies she'd made for solely this purpose.
"You bet your ass," grinned Natasha, an evil sparkle in her eye. Wanda did not say anything, but she nodded eagerly.
Not waiting for anyone else, Esca led the way, the pie aloft in her hand as if she were a waitress. She neared her place, where she had been sitting next to Pietro, as Nat approached Clint and Wanda neared Vision.
"Here we are!" exclaimed Esca in a sing-song voice. But before the men could express their astonishment, the three slammed the pies into Clint's, Vision's, and Pietro's faces.
There was dead astonishment as Steve, Thor, and Tony stared, bug-eyed, at their male compatriots. Their mouths were somewhat open in shock, as if thankful that they, too, hadn't been targeted.
Esca gently pried the pie off of Pietro's face. His eyes were tightly closed and his facial features were all scrunched up as if she'd just fed him a raw lemon. When he heard her start to laugh, however, he forcefully shoved as much icing as he could off his face and muttered menacingly, "Oh, you shouldn't have done that, Esca Rarity."
Seeing his expression, she just raised an eyebrow—before she could retort, he wiped a large streak of icing onto her cheek, which made her gasp and exclaim, "Don't you dare!"
"Oh, I'm daring!" he rejoined straight back, wiping more of it into her eyebrows and her hair. "You asked for it!"
Esca tried to run away from him, but of course Pietro was faster—he whirled back to her, picked her up, and poked her sides relentlessly, knowing that it tickled her like hell. She screeched and thrashed in his arms, shouting, "Pietro Max—Maximoff, put me d-down! AIGH! Nat?! Nat!"
As it turned out, Natasha was having her own problems. Clint was insistently throwing chunks of lemon slices at her, and of course his aim was perfect, so Nat was struggling to dodge all the citrus fruit being pelted her way. Wanda, meanwhile, was handing Vision a napkin while giggling at the android, who exclaimed mildly, "You might've just said something, Wanda."
At last, Pietro put Esca down, though he made doubly sure that she had a fair amount of frosting on her face as well. "Curse you, Esca Rarity," he muttered, raising an eyebrow. Or at least Esca thought he was raising an eyebrow—she couldn't tell what with the slice of lemon stuck to his face. "You do realize that someday, I will make you pay for that?"
"I think you've retaliated enough," she replied calmly, still shaking from how much he'd tickled her.
"We'll see about that."
"No, we won't! I hereby declare this prank war is over, or I won't cook anymore!"
Hearing this, the men all groaned and drearily promised her that they'd stop.
Esca laughed, as she actually hadn't been expecting for them to desist. "Well, thank you, gentlemen. As it is, I really did prepare desserts for tonight. I made one for each of us according to what our favorites are."
This earned a resounding cheer—but before Esca could go grab the sweets, Pietro seized her arm and kissed her cheek, never mind the icing on her face. He laughed, however, as he declared, "Great. Now I've got to go and take another shower after this."
"There are worse things in the world," she responded, trying not to laugh.
"There are—assuming I don't have another surprise waiting for me when I step in my bathroom."
That made her laugh despite her restraints—Pietro helped her serve the final course. Once everyone was done eating and once they had showered, he even helped Esca clean up the soaked rug and the table. He told her exaggerated stories of the many pranks that had taken place around Stark Tower the previous week, and often made her laugh with his ridiculous narrations.
Despite the thrill of pranking the Avengers, and despite the laughter he brought her at his tall tales, however, the best part of Esca's night was sitting on the couch with Pietro as they watched a movie—without having to worry about being pranked.