Buffy Meets The Avengers...At Last!

Tony wandered through Stark Tower that morning, lost in deep thought on the best ways to add even more upgrades to his Iron Man armor. He paced around the main conference room on the ninety-first floor several times before exiting towards the living room, still thinking hard about the energy cost/benefits evaluation of enhancing his repulsors while passing by the room's largest couch in there—

Pause.

Tony edged backwards, now finally distracted by seeing how all of his teammates in their civilian attire were mutually squeezed on the couch, munching away at individual buckets of…popcorn?

From left to right, there was Steve, Bruce, Clint, Natasha, and Thor amiably examining him in turn, jaws working busily. The popcorn smell was definitely enticing, making Tony's stomach rumble slightly.

"What's going on?" Tony wanted to know, feeling a little hurt at being left out of something the others were now obviously up to together.

"Oh, JARVIS told us about our latest guest coming over and we decided we weren't going to miss her meeting you for anything. Clint was the one who suggested the popcorn," Steve answered.

"Guest?" blankly repeated Tony. "What guest? JARVIS, do I have any appointments today?"

The building's AI responded in his usual urbane manner, "No, but Ms. Summers was most insistent, sir. Regarding that, could you please immediately move two steps to the right?"

"Why?" Tony wanted to know, even if he promptly obeyed JARVIS anyway.

Tony's absolute trust in the AI was rewarded by him then avoiding being struck by the room door sailing through the air after it'd been entirely kicked out of its frame by a very angry small blond woman standing there.

The spinning door still whooshed by close enough to Tony for him to feel the breeze in its passing. Thor lazily stuck out a free hand that wasn't full of his latest grab for popcorn to catch the door edge in mid-flight without any strain shown by the thunder god.

Several seconds later:

"YOU!"

That single word was delivered with all the loathing Buffy Summers could manage, about on the level of finding a bubonic plague-infested cockroach in her bathroom which when discovered then began making extremely obscene gestures at the Slayer with its antennae.

"Me?"

Tony responded with his most innocent voice, even while held up over the woman's head by a single petite fist clutching the front of his Armani jacket.

"You."

This repetition now included an additional lowering of Buffy's voice to near-absolute zero temperatures due to the cockroach also acquiring a world-record case of leprosy and commencing to mime an invitation to a series of sexual perversions which even Borat from Kazakhstan would've found personally disgusting.

"Me," Tony admitted, becoming genuinely curious about what he'd done now to earn this kind of reaction.

His female accoster then began speaking out loud to the room at large.

"All I want is a nice, simple life. Am I getting this? NO!" she ended with a loud bellow at her fascinated audience.

Buffy continued her rant, "That's because it all went mondo insano after Xander came here! He finally figured out it might've been kinda dumb to insult Thor Odinsson right to his face, so even when Giles did the whole apology thing, Xan went off to say he was sorry himself. You want to know what happened then? They bonded. Not over something guy-sensible like cars or man caves or even table saws, but the stupidest stuff ever…FOOD!"

All the other Avengers on the couch stared inquiringly at where Thor sat.

Even Tony twisted his head to examine how the Asgardian gave a massive, good-natured shrug while pointing out to his friends, "Knowest what Viking cuisine was like? They stuck a haunch of meat into the fire until one end was charred solid, the other end still half-raw, and with any luck you could gnaw off some edible scraps from the middle. It got old quickly."

"My heart truly bleeds for you," Buffy snarled. "Where the hell did you both even find a Filipino restaurant here that serves durian pizza?!"

A very confused Steve looking around saw Thor showing off a rather pleased expression of fond recollection, while Clint, Nat, Bruce, and even Tony still appeared mutually appalled.

He leaned over to whisper at Bruce, "What's a durian?"

The scientist eyed Steve with his own puzzlement, until something occurred to him. "You served mostly in Europe during the war, right?"

"There were some missions around the Med and the Russian front but, yeah. What's that got to do with this?"

"Bruce probably encountered durians in the Philippines," Natasha dryly said. "Clint and I did the same elsewhere at Thailand. It's a very delicious fruit, something like almond-flavored custard at least for me."

A wincing Clint contributed, "The problem with durians is they taste great, but the smell is beyond belief for some people. There've been a lot of imaginative descriptions for the stench, but I lean most toward the one that calls it 'rotting onions blended with a six-months unwashed gym sock.' Places like Singapore totally ban durians just for that reason alone."

"You can add the New York Slayers House to the list," Buffy growled. "Do you have any idea what the stuff does to our noses? We had to steam-clean the whole damn place after Xan brought back his take-out durian pizza! He's now banned anywhere on the East Coast for six months unless the next apocalypse is really bad."

"I shall miss him, First Slayer," Thor said regretfully. "He had a keen eye for the best egg creams in the city."

"Yeah, whatever," Buffy rolled her own eyes, dismissing the amused Asgardian while she glared at two more recent pains in her ass.

Using a surprised Tony as a pointer, she crossly indicated Natasha, "Couldn't you have found somewhere — anywhere — else to do the nasty with Giles when you visited Cleveland? It was embarrassing enough walking in on the two of you, but now every time I need to visit the Director's office again, I can't even look at his desk!"

Nat just leaned back on the couch, appearing as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

Giving the Black Widow another fulminating glower, Buffy switched her attention to a sniggering Clint, "And there's him with his own creepy fetish!"

Once more, every other Avenger save for the only woman on the couch were now incredulously eyeballing one of their own looking remarkably content.

Clint cheerfully declared to them all, "Their headquarters has the greatest air vents that I've ever crawled into! Best of all, I finally achieved there what I'd never thought I'd get, the chance to sneak through an actual Galaxy Quest chomper space!"

Buffy gritted her teeth, "Could you please just stop leading the mini-Slayers there when they chase you? It's bad enough Andrew blew half our construction budget on that thing! Exiling him to Greenland still doesn't make up for conning everybody he had permission to build it!"

Tony started to lose it in a thorough giggle-fit, only to be yanked down where Buffy had held him over her head and brought nose-to-nose with the annoyed Slayer telling him, "Shut up! I'm not thrilled either with your intelligent computer, what with how much time Wils spends lately on what she's calling the Pinocchio Project. It's keeping her too busy for all the other important stuff she does for the New Council."

"JARVIS?" Tony called out disbelievingly at the ceiling. "Is this true?"

In a sheepish voice they'd never heard before from the AI, JARVIS responded, "Sir, I assure you that only preliminary discussions have been held so far with Ms. Rosenberg as to the possibility of myself being somehow provided with a corporeal body. Should it ever actually come to pass, I promise to seek out your authorization beforehand as to the process itself."

There was a dead silence in the living room, broken then by JARVIS adding in his most meditative tone, "In any case, sir, I am still wholly opposed to also being endowed with an anthropomorphic six-inch cricket for my conscience. No matter how much Ms. Rosenberg desires this."

Eventually, Buffy cleared her throat loudly, "Back to me, okay?"

She aimed a distracted Tony straight at Bruce. "You're not exactly my favorite person here either! There's lots of reasons to object about you having a relationship with my little sister!"

"Hulk likes Dawn. He won't ever hurt her," Bruce calmly pointed out to an irate Slayer.

"Well, whoopee!" Buffy snarked. She glared at somebody completely missing the point.

"Every time I try to bring up the whole inappropriate issues such as you being older than her or having inside you a green rage monster, Dawn laughs in my face like I'm one to talk. I'm telling you, it's no fun being cut off at the knees the second I open my mouth! Even worse, the brat needles me mercilessly by saying afterwards the very last thing you want to do is get angry!"

"He might grumble inside me, but even the Hulk has to agree puny Banner is good for something," a quite deadpan Bruce replied.

"Not listening! Not listening!" Buffy frantically chanted. Shuddering, her gaze fell upon someone who was looking a little bit offended at hearing such private details.

The Slayer's wrath promptly returned at full measure. Buffy indignantly accused Steve, "Hey, Mr. Clean, don't you dare act all virtuously old-fashioned and innocent like you never got laid yet! Faith brags every chance she gets over how many beds the two of you have broken so far! Worse of all, you just had to bring my frenemy into your own secret cult with its whole deal of outlandish costumes and weird ceremonies!"

Once again the rest of the Avengers were agog. Even Tony, who also had to worry about how his arms and legs were starting to turn numb.

Steve himself appeared decidedly affronted by Buffy's latest accusation. He made it clear to them all, "We just go to swing dance competitions! I was happy enough learning people still like that style and it only made things better when Faith gave it a try with me to enjoy it very much. Anything more than that is absolutely none of your business."

"Yeah, right," Buffy muttered under her breath. "Faith in a 'forties dress that isn't up to her thong and with shoulder pads big enough to land a plane on these? Sure signs the next apocalypse is gonna be extreme."

Collecting herself, Buffy scowled at those morons, including the one in her grip. She announced, "Fine! I'll just say what I came here for in the first place and then leave!"

Bringing down her arm, Buffy shrieked right into Tony's cringing face, "IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!"

A moment later, Tony from where he was lying prone on the floor after being callously dropped there then heard their crazy visitor stomp out of the living room. This departure was accompanied by the loud, prolonged applause from the other Avengers on the couch obviously agreeing with Buffy Summers.

"Traitors," mumbled Tony, resigned to waiting for the feeling to return to his body.