Aaaaugh, sorry for the delay!
Yoo-hoo. Hi! Yes, I'm talking to you. You! The one reading this right now.
Oh-em-gee, is that a Kardashian behind you?
Made you look.
Seriously? Not even a little?
Okay, you know what, fine . This was just a heads up anyway: I'm planning on killing a whole mess of bad guys. So, so many bad guys.
You might want to watch out for that.
They took my girl.
-o o-
"Uhm. I think Spider-man will be back soon. So." Ned lowered the cookies and looked between the two adults who had burst into the apartment. "We're good here. You can - you can both go. We'll be fine."
As the man- Ned blinked.
That was Luke Cage . Oh man-oh man-oh man, Pete was going to be so mad he missed this.
As Luke Cage strode closer, the face plate on the helmet dropped; Ned slumped. "Oh, you're really here. Spider-man said sometimes the suits are empty. Hi, Ms Potts."
Ellie, hand tightly grasping his own, stared up in saucer-eyed silence. She looked caught somewhere between fear and hero worship. He could relate.
There was a quiet cough from the door.
Ned shuffled a half step back into the kitchen, keeping Ellie carefully behind him. He was developing kind of a sense about these things now.
"Hi." Another man and woman, these in black BDUs, stood just inside the apartment doorway. Both held their hands carefully away from their bodies. The woman had a tentative smile, the man was looking at Ellie with an expression that Ned couldn't quite parse.
"I'm Daisy," the woman said, as Ms Potts raised her blaster again. "Maybe you heard me on the radio with your fiancé. This is my partner, Mack. Our vote's for white orchids, by the way."
Mack nodded. "Hey."
"We've been following Mr Cage," Daisy said, with a mildly apologetic glance in his direction. "We just wanted to talk to- to Ellie."
Mr Cage took two more steps forward, planting himself directly in front of Ellie and Ned with arms crossed. "Yeah. I'll discuss that with my clients."
It was very possible, Ned thought, that nothing in his life would ever be as cool as this moment. He'd peaked.
Worth it .
Ms Potts looked between the two factions, each shifting as they began to square off. Her visor dropped again and and she stepped between them with a palm raised in each direction. She turned her head to look at Daisy and Mack. "Spider-man, Ms Jones and another associate will be arriving in a few minutes. I suggest we table this, as well as any conversations involving wedding planning, until they arrive. Agreed?"
Daisy gave a short nod, but Mack was already moving. He took a knee to bring him down to Elie's level, finding her gaze through the press of bodies between them.. "Hey," he said, expression pensive, but tone soft. "Do you remember us?"
Ned looked down at Ellie, saw her waver.
Daisy edged a little closer. "We're your friends," she pressed.
Ellie began to scream.
The scream rose.
And rose.
-o o-
The truck screeched to a halt. Jessica flung out a hand to stop herself tumbling. Castle cursed as he tried, and failed, to do the same.
Jessica got her feet under her and scuttled ungracefully to the compartment window. She slid it to the one side; the shotgun seat was conspicuously empty. "What the hell?"
"We're here." Colleen pulled the keys, then gestured at the abandoned-looking apartment block they were parked beside. "Spider-man bolted."
Jessica looked back over her shoulder and shook her head in the face of Castle's suddenly speculative expression. "Try anything, I'll put you down and I won't feel bad about it. Say you hear me."
"Yes, ma'am." He settled back, looking more amused than annoyed. "I hear you."
So much for laying low; at least it was still the middle of the night. "Why'd he bail?"
-o o-
Ned did the only thing he could think of: he pulled Ellie into his arms and shouted to be heard over the deafening shriek. "It's okay! That's Luke Cage and Pepper Potts - they're heroes! They won't let anyone hurt you!"
The crescendo peaked and fell, until it was submerged completely by hiccoughing sniffles. Ned swallowed hard, then surreptitiously checked to see if his ears were bleeding. They weren't. So. Cool. "Wow."
"Anyone call for a friendly, neighborhood Spider-man?"
There was a flicker in his peripheral vision and then Peter - Spider-man - was landing neatly crouched next to Mr Cage. To Ned's increasingly more experienced eye, he looked more than a little singed and there was a tear in the suit. He smelled like smoke; his voice was hoarse.
He'd been worse.
Ned pulled Ellie closer still and sidled behind him; Ellie seemed more than happy to go.
Ms Potts started forward, raising a hand. "P-"
"You mean Spider-man ?" Ned interjected quickly. "Yeah, sometimes I drop the 'p' as well. Pider-man. Better. If you're scared of spiders. Which I'm not. But I like pie."
There was a long silence, not least of which came from Peter, looking over his shoulder. Somehow his mask perfectly expressed his feelings on the matter. "You guys okay?" he asked, somehow barely sounding horrified at all.
"We're good. I think. Ellie?"
"We're okay." She sidled closer still, glaring towards Daisy and Mack. "I don't like them."
"We're not here to hurt anyone," Mack said, as he rose. He sounded tired, Ned thought. And Daisy's expression was pinched with disappointment. "There's a lot you don't know."
"Tony, I have this covered. Go talk to Ross." Ms Potts was standing, head bowed. Ned had thought she was undecided, but her gaze sharpened as she looked up and she nodded, tapping a finger to the side of the helmet. Not hesitating. Listening. "We know more than you think," she said crisply, and moved to stand at Peter's other side.
Ned, personally, had never felt safer. From Ellie's drying tears, she was feeling better about the whole thing too.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. is working with Ross," Ms Potts said flatly.
Daisy shook her head firmly. "S.H.I.E.L.D. really, really isn't," she said, tone disgusted. "We became aware of his activities through an … associate. A friend. She went missing." Her mouth tightened and she glanced at Mack.
He shrugged. "We thought Ellie might … know where she is."
"I had a friend," Jessica said from the doorway. "He could tell when people were lying. Pretty sure his services would not be required."
She pushed Castle, stumbling, into the room ahead of her and followed at an easy pace. "Want to try again?"
-o o-
"What do you want, Stark?" Ross, hands behind his back, stood ramrod straight before the bank of security monitors. It was almost four in the morning and the guy hadn't shown any sign of fatigue at all. Despite himself, Tony was impressed.
"World peace," Tony said as he wandered into the control room, Rhodey on his six. "An end to hunger. Two-point-four puppies for every child. I'm not unreasonable, though. Right now, I'll settle for answers."
Ross turned with a scowl. "I have no idea-"
"Yeah. No." Tony held up a hand. "We're skipping denial and going straight to anger. Here's the thing: you should have just let me go help Spider-man. Not only because it was the right thing to do, but because if you had, I wouldn't have had time to do a little digging.
"Hey, here's some good news: Elle Iwamura isn't missing. Mostly because Elle Iwamura doesn't exist. Michiko Teller, on the other hand, is alive, and well, and currently studying classics in San Francisco. Took a while to find her from that grainy photo doing the rounds: she looks a little different."
Tony tapped a button on his phone and brought up a holo-display that flickered through photo after photo, chronicling the life of a young girl as she became a young woman. "I called her parents - Paul and Emily? Lovely couple. Didn't even mind being woken and asked a few searching questions at three in the morning."
A muscle in Ross' cheek twitched.
"Uh huh. Emily teaches third grade, Paul's a janitor. You'd think he's an open book, right? But the details of his employer are a little thin on the ground. Any comments? Questions? We're getting to the good part."
"You're wildly outside your clearance level and you can be damn sure I'll be reporting this."
"I was hoping for a 'how in the world?!'" Tony turned, disappointed, to Rhodey. "I never get a 'how in the world?!'"
"That's because you're not in a cartoon," Rhodey pointed out. "And because You're Tony Stark. No one wants to know how you do what you do. It's like using a blacklight at a motel."
"Thanks for that. Where were we? Right. Secret government installations." Tony began to scroll through a very different series of images. "Sydney, K. Smerdyakov, D. Khan, K. Darkhölme, R. Names ring a bell? No? Wow. Okay. How about Carly-"
"Get Stryker on the line," Ross snapped at his aide. "Now."
"FRIDAY, get Stryker off the line," Tony asked, pleasantly. "Now? Keep his number handy, though. Maybe we can chat later."
"On it, boss."
Rhodey stepped forward. "You made another raft, that it? Somewhere out there in the middle of nowhere. And you just started throwing people in it?
"This isn't what the Accords are for. Some of them are dangerous - should be in prison - I'll give you that, but with due process!"
"Some of them," Tony interjected. "Sure. Kamala Khan, on the other hand, is a high school student. When she isn't running around saving lives, she's a highly respected writer. In certain circles. I'm told." He scrolled through the data pad and shook his head, muttering. "SlothBaby? She'll regret that when she's forty. And, more importantly, why doesn't she write about me ?"
Ross ignored him, focussing on making his case to Rhodey. "Of course it's what the Accords are for. My God, do you know how dangerous those people are? The ones Stark listed alone - they can appear as, mimic, whomever they choose! The implications for security, for the nation itself , are terrifying.
"There was a breakout," he admitted. "Involving several of the names on that list. We don't know why one of them chose to take the appearance of a small child, but surely that only illustrates how dangerous they are! We needed a full Registration Act. And you know I'm right, Colonel Rhodes."
Rhodey shook his head. "They're people, Ross. And if you think we won't take this-"
"Take it where?" Ross raised his chin, expression hardening. "This comes from the highest levels - this is DSD."
Tony paused. "So, to be clear? This is nothing to do with the Accords. This is the Registration Act, or whatever you called it?"
Ross blinked. "The Accords aren't-"
"Thank you, Secretary Ross." Tony pointed towards the door. "Get the hell out of my facility and take your jackboots with you. If you aren't acting under the auspices of the Accords, you have zero authority in this facility or over any actions I may choose to undertake as a private citizen. We're done. Don't let the turrets hit you on the way out. Or do. That's fine too."
"I'm not going anywhere," Ross said, crossing his arms firmly.
That gave Tony a moment's pause. Ross didn't look like a man trying to prove a point, or assert his authority. He looked… huh.
"Really." Tony turned his attention to the monitors Ross had been studying. "What's so bad out there you'd rather be here? Think they're coming for you, Ross? Think maybe they're right to?"
Ross' expression fissured, the first real crack in his composure Tony had ever witnessed. It was strangely disquieting. "You have no idea what it takes to protect this country," he said, subdued.
"Maybe." Tony could acknowledge that. He turned his head again. "Colonel Rhodes? Think you could pass a one-oh-one on protecting this great nation?"
"I consider myself more of an educator." Rhodey stepped forward after a glance at the still-empty monitors. "You came here because it's a fortress."
"You'll never see them coming," Ross said. "They're ghosts. Hell, for all I know, either one of you could be a damn shifter."
Tony caught movement in the feed at the front gate. A red blur in extreme closeup as someone - something - peeked quickly into the camera.
A moment later, a red-costumed man dropped into frame. He looked like he was trying to wave cheerfully at any viewers, but was slightly hampered by the pistol in each hand. And by the way he had an arm hooked around the neck of one Ross' security detail.
"O - kay?" Tony looked askance at Rhodey, who shook his head.
"Wade Wilson," Ross supplied, looking torn between irritation and genuine concern. "Deadpool. I'm not your problem now, Stark. He is."