Hello! I promise I'm not dead, I've just been very busy :). I started this story when I was a junior in High School with too much time on my hands, and now I'm an adult off to college with significantly less time. I've struggled with this story mostly because the narrative viewpoint follows Jasmine very closely, and it's difficult for me to take steps back and skip time because of that. This chapter is something I've been sitting on for three years, and I worked on it more recently to finish and fix up. My writing style has changed a bit since I began this story, and I like to think I'm at least a little bit better at writing in general now, so I will probably go back and rewrite some of the chapters in the beginning to better flow with the style for this and the rest of the story. I do have most of it plotted out, but I'll probably end up playing around more with how I tell this initial part of Jasmine's story so it doesn't become repetitive. Anyway, as promised (so many years ago) here's the chapter where Jasmine meets Tony! Lots of love everyone, ~Auna.
Miss Natalia sits in the back of the plane going through some notes on something, and cross referencing it with a book written in a language I don't recognize. The letters are shaped funny, and if I had to guess I'd say it's Russian.
Agent 7 has a magazine in his hands from where he sits next to me near the front, but he isn't reading it. I'm not sure why he's flipping the pages like he is reading it, since he doesn't even bother to glance down at the pages once in a while, but twisting around the corner of my seat to watch the pilots work in the cockpit with all the blinking lights and flashing buttons is much more entertaining than pondering why this Agent seems to be so scared.
I mean, I'm not that bad.
Eventually, I get bored of watching the pilots since they aren't doing much and flip in my seat to stare at the ceiling.
That gets boring too, and I try turning myself so I'm upside down, with my feet on the headrest and my back on the seat.
Agent 7 stares at me, clearly zoned out, and I take to trying to read the clock on the opposite wall, upside down. It doesn't work out very well, I don't think, since it doesn't have any numbers written on it, but then again, the lack of numbers means I can't be very sure.
After a few more shifts in position, I start to wonder if the clock is broken, because it's barely moving.
"Passing ten thousand feet and climbing." The pilot's voice over the intercom is quiet, and neither Agent 7 nor Miss Natalia react at all. If I didn't know any better, I could have thought I'd imagined it.
Eventually, I manage to find a semi-comfortable position on the plane and must fall asleep because the next thing I know is that I'm standing on a vibrantly red couch, held up by my armpits by a pretty woman with red hair and green eyes.
My arms and legs are much smaller than now, and when I realize that I start to fall over, incapable of standing up on my own.
The woman catches me and sings something into my ear. The sound is muffled slightly, and my sight is spotty. I try to shake my head, but I can't seem to control anything.
A man comes into view, clearing up my sight, and he has dark curly hair like mine and pretty hazel eyes that sparkle. He's wearing glasses and doesn't look away from me as he says something to the lady holding me.
They switch, him holding me as she leaves to go somewhere, but before I can dwell on it too much there's sparkly, colorful bubbles in the air. I wonder what they feel like, and just as soon as that happens I'm reaching out to grab one.
My hands and my brain are having a disconnect, and I can't control where my hand is going, other than towards the bubbles.
A loud bang over to the side interrupts me, and my lack of motor control is frustrating as I'm shoved into someone else's arms, probably the woman's, and there's some screaming.
The rest of the dream is spotty, other than a remarkably bright flash of green light that seems infinitely familiar.
I wake back in the plane, squished uncomfortably in my seat. My sharp breaths are barely intelligible over the sound of the engines, and those seem too loud. I can't think, and the cabin is so cold that it seems to whistle in my ears. I try moving to sit up, but the sound of my clothes rubbing against the leather is too bright, so I just lay there and try to relax.
I'm so tense that when we hit a bout of turbulence, I jiggle against the seat. The lights are too bright, and the sounds too loud, and if the tag in the back of my dress doesn't stop poking my shoulder I'm going to stand up and take all my clothes off because I can't think about anything else–
"Jasmine." Miss Natalia's voice is soothing, and just enough of a distraction that I manage to twist my head to look at her. "We'll be landing in about an hour, and we won't have much time after we get off the plane. If you want to use the bathroom or get a snack, I'd suggest doing that now."
Although I don't have to go to the bathroom, I get up and go looking for it anyway. Maybe I'll find some scissors I can use to cut the stupid tag out of my dress.
The bathroom is just big enough for a toilet and a counter with a sink. Underneath the counter are three drawers. I open the first one to find it full of toilet paper, and the second has a hair dryer and some nasty, used hair bands, stringy pieces of someone else's hair knitted around them.
I make a face and close the drawer with a satisfying smack.
Drawer number three is completely empty. The counter has a hand towel and a wrapped bar of soap.
I decide to get the hair dryer out and see if it works. Do things like that work on airplanes? Is that even safe?
The outlet is hiding behind the hand towel and is stiff when I plug in the hair dryer. I have to lean all the way into the plug to get it to go in. The hairdryer rests on the counter, sad and lonely, and I pick it up like I would a handgun, front facing away from me. The buttons are stiff and sticky and I can't get them to switch. I squeeze both fingers over one of them as hard as I can, hands shaking and fingers burning, and end up squeezing so hard it slips out of my hand and falls into the sink. Plastic and metal clang loudly, and I hear Agent 7 get up from his seat on the other side of the wall. A glance at the hair dryer tells me I don't have enough time to put it away before he gets to the door so I back up to the other side of the toilet instead.
Unfortunately for my life, the automatic sensor on the sink flashes when it senses the hair dryer, which seems to be getting warm, and the water turns on right on the hair dryer.
Agent 7 opens the door roughly and takes a step in. When he smacks the counter in response to a bit of turbulence, I flinch and raise my arms to cover my face.
The hairdryer explodes into plastic shrapnel with a loud pop, pieces flying everywhere.
Agent 7 and I both scream, although he is honestly the one that sounds most like a little girl, and I can hear Miss Natalia and one or two of the flight attendants yelling outside the bathroom.
When Miss Natalia storms into the bathroom she assesses the situation so quickly I barely notice it, and then pulls me out from around Agent 7. As she escorts me back to her seat, I hear one of the flight attendants coaching Agent 7 through some breathing exercises that don't seem to be doing much work.
Was a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent really brought down by a jump scare? Fury and I might have to talk about the quality of my baby sitters... on the other hand, maybe whoever organizes which Agents watch me picks the bad ones on purpose, so the good ones can be put to better use?
"Jasmine," Miss Natalia interrupts my thought process when she sits me in her chair and looks at me with her big green eyes. Their vivid color reminds me of something for a moment, but the more I grasp for it, the further away it becomes until eventually it's gone. "Are you hurt anywhere?"
I life my arms above my head so I can see the side of them that was angled towards the hair dryer and find a small cut, maybe the size of my pinky fingernail, that stings when I really think about it.
Miss Natalia purses her lips at the sight and then pulls out a first aid kit from underneath the table. The wipe she uses first stings worse than the cut did on its own and I grimace.
"It's a disinfectant," she explains quietly. Before I can ask what a disinfectant is, Miss Natalia is asking me another question, "What happened in there?"
"I was checking out what was in all those drawers and found a hair dryer. I wanted to see if it would work, so I plugged it in. It wouldn't turn on, and when I tried pressing the buttons really hard, it slipped out of my hand and landed in the sink. When I heard Agent 7 get up to investigate, I panicked and tried to hide behind the toilet with my hands up to shield my face. When Agent 7 came in, the water in the sink had turned on and then he hit the counter to steady himself on the turbulence and then the hairdryer exploded."
Miss Natalia raises her eyebrow at me, sticks a bandaid on my little cut (It has some deformed white cat in a pink dress on it that I can't quite get a good look at) and then buckles me into her seat. "Ignoring the fact that you have no self control, which despite what Fury thinks is perfectly understandable since you're a child, and the fact that you have a trauma response to an adult coming to find you, did you actually believe Agent Rosero was going to hurt you?"
I shrug and bring my arms down, ignoring the cat bandaid mystery for now. "I guess not, but you never really know."
She nods, sits in the seat across from me, and then presses a button that rolls up the window shades. I get distracted looking out at all of the tiny people and buildings, which was probably her intention.
When the plane lands and we get outside on the tarmac, it's very, very hot. A new Agent is waiting for us very seriously, standing like the military guys do on television sometimes, except he's holding a brown paper bag too. Agent 7 is nowhere to be found, and Miss Natalia instructs Agent 8 to keep an eye on me while she checks her knives in her knife case, which one of the flight crew members has helpfully put out and opened for her.
Agent 8 walks over to stand next to me in the shade of the plane, and when Miss Natalia isn't looking passes me the bag. Inside is a small paper cup with a plastic lid that, with some investigating, I find contains some yellow, cold, slushy stuff that smells vaguely like a pineapple. I greedily lick a few tongue fulls of the stuff up and enjoy it very much, but it's getting messy quick and Agent 8 seems to have forgotten a spoon or any other utensil.
As I'm contemplating just shoving my entire face into the cup and eating my cold treat like a possessed squirrel, Miss Natalia's phone rings with a call that is likely from an impatient Fury, if I'm learning to read her scowls correctly. She answers and walks a few meters away to take her call in privacy, leaving her case of glinting knives out where anyone could get into them.
Of course, there's no one around here but Agent 8 and myself and Agent 8 very conveniently has his eyes closed. He actually seems to be attempting to take a nap standing up, and for a very brief moment I contemplate poking him and running away to see what it does.
Miss Natalia is still talking to Fury on the phone, far enough away that I can't read her face or hear her angry looking words. Another quick check on Agent 8 reveals he's looking up at the sky in a manner that suggests he's trying to count the water molecules in the singular wispy cloud overhead. I go ahead and help myself to a utensil from Miss Natalia's special box of knives.
Just on the top layer of the knife case there is a very large range of knives in all sorts of shapes and sizes to choose from, but I grab a short and flat one near the front and within easy reach. Unfortunately, I can't reach the curved on at the other end because I'm too short.
As I walk back to the shade of the plane I try to scoop some of my pineapple slush up with my knife but it nearly falls right off the blade. I let that drop fall into my mouth, reducing the risk of slicing open something important on the sharp edge. My pineapple treat is melting faster than I am in the heat, so I scoop and drop as quickly as possible.
Agent 8 continues staring up at the cloud, although I'm not sure if he's truly seeing them. Miss Natalia ends her call with Fury and comes back over just when I start scraping the yummy remains out of the bottom of the cup and into my mouth, and she promptly turns purple.
"Jasmine, are you eating ice cream with one of my knives?" Her voice has taken on that dangerous tone that, from what Mr. Clint has taught me, means I should be very careful what I say next. But I've never been very good at being careful.
I shrug, and lick the flat of the blade, getting sticky syrup and half dried pineapple slush on my chin.
"I'm not eating ice cream, but Agent 8 wasn't watching me closely enough anyway."
She grabs my wrist and twists the knife out of my hand to put away. I drink the rest of my pineapple treat as she tugs me by the wrist back to her knife case. Because my head is in the bowl I nearly miss her point the knife at Agent 8. "You're so lucky I haven't used this knife yet. If she caught a blood disease from some cretin, never mind if she cut her tongue open, I would have gut you with the knife myself."
Miss Natalia drops her knife into the open case and closes it with one hand. Her grip on my wrist is firm but gentle, and she takes a deep breath as she locks the knives up. She turns to me and grips my chin. "Open." I stick my tongue out and wiggle it around for her to see. Satisfied, Miss Natalia turns from me to address Agent 8.
"Agent Carson." The man, not moments ago a stoic and cardboard personality, seems to quiver with fear. "You're dismissed. Please debrief Fury over the phone and send in someone to watch Jasmine at the hotel. Make sure Fury understands that you are to take a summer course about the dangers of knives, bloodborne diseases, and allowing children to be exposed to either."
While Agent 8 shakes like a leaf, Miss Natalia grabs the knife case in both hands and directs me to follow her to the car on the other side of the tarmac. I can't find a trashcan anywhere to put my pineapple slush cup in, so I hold onto it. Miss Natalia puts her knife case in the back of the car where a few suitcases sit. "Buckle up in the passenger seat," She points helpfully to which side I'm supposed to get in. Stupid American cars. The handle on the car door is just above my head, and I have to jump to get inside.
I stick my pineapple slush cup in the bottom of the door while I get buckled. Miss Natalia gets in and starts the car, which starts playing a quiet song on the radio, and I stare out the window as we drive through sunny California.
There's tall buildings and short buildings and lots of empty space between buildings and no space at all between buildings and even some sections with no buildings at all, just lots of road and a few trees. We stop at a drive through place that sells chicken nuggets for lunch and then use the restroom at a gas station a few minutes down the road from there, but otherwise Miss Natalia is very strict about her driving. Every time I move too much in my seat for her liking, she glares at me. If I reach out to touch the radio, she grabs my hand and puts it back in my lap. If I make noise, she puts her hand on top of my head because she can't reach the rest of me.
I just start to doze off when Miss Natalia stops the car and gets out. I scramble to unbuckle and get out of the car after her, and my knees, numb from sitting for so long, almost buckle when I land. We're on a hot concrete circle in front of a fancy hotel. I tilt my head up to look at how tall the building is, with so many stories I can't count them. There's palm trees everywhere and it smells warm, and there's a breeze that's warm and swishy.
A few attendants from the hotel, dressed in fancy red outfits, come out to get the car and some of the suitcases. I follow them as Miss Natalia gives them the keys and tries to insist that she can carry the two suitcases and the knife case on her own.
The inside of the hotel is beautiful, with a big lobby and lots of pretty lights everywhere. The back wall of the lobby is full of windows that look out on the pool and there's plants everywhere, inside and outside.
I walk in circles around the furniture, trying to look at everything, until Miss Natalia comes to get me. She has the suitcases and knife case stacked on a rolling cart thing with big gold bars on it, apparently having convinced the hotel men that she can take care of herself.
We take an elevator up to the fourth floor, and I hum along to the music playing while we do that. Our room is all the way down at the other end of the hall, 4489, and Miss Natalia has both a swipe card and pin number that she puts in and doesn't let me see. Inside the room are two crisp beds, a chair and table, a wall-mounted television, and a big cupboard. The other wall is covered with curtains, and there's no overhead light.
"The Agents that are supposed to assist me and watch you have the room through that door." She gestures to the door on the wall between the television and the cupboard. "Don't go through the door. Don't open the curtains any more than this–" She pulls open the curtains only to reveal another set behind them that lets light through– "because we can't have people seeing in here. Don't touch anything over there either." She points to the mini fridge in the cupboard and the coffee maker and snacks on top of it. "Why don't you take a nap for a few minutes while I see if another Agent is coming and then order something for dinner?"
"Okay." I walk over to the bed closer to the window and climb up to take my shoes off.
"Does pizza sound alright?"
"Sure!"
I crawl up to the top of the bed and snuggle down into the big pile of pillows and out of the sunshine. The pillows smell kind of like a new car and laying on all of them makes me feel like I'm floating.
I must have been more tired than I thought because I wake up a little while later to find a new Agent and a few pizza boxes in the hotel room, and no Miss Natalia.
"Greetings," says Agent 9 without looking up from their tablet. "There's pizza over there, try not to make a mess."
I climb out of my bed and help myself to a slice of pizza. "Where's Miss Natalia?"
"Agent Romanoff will return in a few hours. Here." Agent 9 hands me a tablet like theirs. It doesn't have a passcode, so I start digging through the different apps while munching on my pizza.
There isn't a lot to do on the tablet, I can't even download games to play, but I do have access to the internet and can look up seemingly anything I want.
I remember Mr. Fury saying something about helping Tony Stark and wonder if there's any information about him on the tablet or the internet. Why would S.H.I.E.L.D. need to help Tony Stark, and why would they need me to do it?
It turns out that Tony Stark is the son of an american inventor named Howard Stark, who worked with Mr. Steve during World War II. Mr. Stark, junior, is also a technology engineer who is super smart. He graduated from high school early and went to MIT and got a ton of PhD's and invented the Iron Man suit recently, which I already knew. Who didn't know who Iron Man was?
I look up the Iron Man suit next to see if I can learn anything useful about it.
Instead of a wikipedia article or anything, I get a ton of news articles about Iron Man and how the technology is something that the American military is trying to take from him, and then some stuff about the fight I saw Tony Stark have on the racetrack in Monaco with the shirtless guy who had electric whips.
I try to look up who the shirtless guy is, but nothing helpful comes up, so I try recent news for either Iron Man or Tony Stark, other than the fight in Monaco or this weird argument he had with a very ugly senator.
I learn that it's Tony Stark's birthday tomorrow, and he's supposed to have a birthday party with a very exclusive guest list. The CEO of Stark Industries, his company, is the lady who used to be his public relations agent, Virginia Potts. He signed the company over to her a few days ago, around when Mr. Steve was coming out of the ice and I was being kidnapped by an American intelligence agency.
Coupled with the seemingly spontaneous decision to drive a race car in Monaco and the news articles about the Stark Expo happening right now, Tony Stark seems to be making some very drastic decisions lately. Remembering the very wild argument with the ugly senator that I can't actually find footage of, I add that to my mental list. I do some digging to see if this is a new behavior or not, and determine that Tony Stark has been reckless in the past, but never to this level.
I get caught up watching some videos about the recent developments with the Iron Man suit and then go down a video rabbit hole and end up falling asleep for the night listening to some blond lady discuss the changes in Tony Starks appearance in the last few years.
Agent 9 wakes me up the next morning to shove a bagel in my face and then ignore me for a few hours in favor of doing something on their tablet.
"Can I go out?"
"No."
"Can you take me down to the lobby?"
"No."
"Can I have something else to eat?"
"I'm not allowed to feed you until lunch because of what happened yesterday."
I huff dramatically and collapse onto the floor. The carpet in the hotel room is itchy but interesting to look at and I spend a while running my fingers through the swirls.
I stand up and spin around in circles until I'm dizzy, then stand up and do it all over again. I run back and forth between my room and Agent 9's room for a time.
Agent 9 feeds me cold leftover pizza for lunch. It was in the fridge. I pretended to feel betrayed, like those ladies in Aunt Petunia's soap operas, but Agent 9 ignores me more.
I eat my pizza. I go through all the drawers in the room and find nothing of interest, just an old copy of the bible that it looks like no one has touched in years.
I doodle on every single piece of hotel paper at the desk. I doodle on my arms and legs when I run out of paper. I run out of pen ink. I spin until I'm dizzy and fall over again, for a time. Agent 9 turns the television on to watch some show about a bunch of people in old dresses called Bridgerton, but keeps the volume off.
I jump on my bed.
I jump on the floor.
I go into Agent 9's room and jump on their bed.
I try to call the front desk with the fancy old phone on the nightstand, but apparently it was unplugged from the wall so I couldn't do that.
Agent 9 gets a call just as they're giving me more cold pizza.
I sit very still and very quiet so I can hear. "Agent Erté, report."
"The kid's doing fine. It's been hungry and loud and busy, but has not attempted escape. I served lunch and dinner-"
"Miss Natalia!" I screech, running and snatching the phone from Agent 9.
"Hey!" Agent 9 tries to jump after me, but I manage to evade them and run into their room through the open door.
"I've had nothing but pizza all day and I haven't been allowed to do anything! I'm so bored stuck in this room! I'm being tortured!"
"You've been stuck inside?" Miss Natalia's voice over the phone is strong and dangerous. Agent 9 freezes.
"Children need exercise, Erté. And I need to check Jasmine over to make sure you haven't done anything else to her. Bring her in the car to the mansion-"
"But you're working!"
"-And I, excuse you did I stutter? Bring Jasmine to me so I can look her over, and then you will watch her here, on these premises, so I can check in more easily."
"Yes, Madame Widow."
Miss Natalia hangs up. I look up at Agent 9, very smug, and they frown and glare at me. I smirk.
"You look like a mental patient! What the actual f- I mean- just- ugh!" Miss Natalia grabs my arm and tugs me into a bathroom to scrub at the ink doodles I made all over my arms.
"There's some on my legs too!" I chirp, just happy to be out of that awful room. She wets a rag and starts to scrub at my skin. "You just can't see it because of my tights!"
"Is that so." She purses her lips, obviously displeased, although I'm not sure if it's with me or with Agent 9.
Miss Natalia is wearing a brown dress with a deep neckline and a tight skirt, and she looks pretty even in the awful lighting of this little bathroom. She gives up after a minute of trying to get my doodles off my arms, but I'm perfectly patient and happy to stand there for as long as she needs. Miss Natalia boops my nose when she's done and I smile.
"Remember, in front of anyone here that I am Natalie Rushman, not Natalia Romanova, okay?"
I look down at my arms and observe the doodle remnants. "Yeah, but why?"
She turns off the lights and ushers me back out of the bathroom. "It's a code name that I can use when I don't want to be associated with S.H.I.E.L.D. Or my past in Russia."
"So like Sophie Evans is a code name for Jasmine potter?
We walk past Agent 9 who scurries to follow us down the hall, and Miss Natalia purses her lips at me. "Like Natasha Romanoff is a code name for Natalia Romanova."
"Cool. I'll have to come up with one."
I skip down the hall. We stop in front of a small sitting room off to the side of a completely empty room.
"Stay in here with Agent 9. I'll be back a few times during the night to check on you."
And then Miss Natalia disappears. Agent 9 walks into the room and flops down on a couch, tablet already open to play the rest of their Bridgerton episode from earlier.
I follow Miss Natalia down the hall.
Over the course of my exploration of the building, I lost my shoes. Which, it turns out, has been helpful for sneaking because all these floors are very loud. My red and gold tutu has left a trail of glitter behind me that Miss Natalia could follow easily, although I doubt any of the other agents are quite smart enough to figure it out.
I creep down one of the last halls to explore. There's a doorway open to the right, and I can vaguely hear two people in there.
"Bring that over here." A man's voice says. There's a few soft sounds, footsteps and someone setting a few things down. "I'll take that. Why don't you-" a long pause filled with the rustling of fabric. I keep my eyes on my blue socks and take a few more careful steps down the hallway. "I gotta say, it's hard to get a read on you. Where are you from?"
"Legal." Miss Natalia's voice is soft, and it puts me on edge as I creep down the rest of the hall.
"Can I ask you a question, hypothetically?" I peek carefully around the corner. "Bit odd." A man in his mid thirties with funny facial hair and a dark red shirt sits in a chair. Miss Natalia is sitting on the edge of it, facing away from me. I check the opposite wall for mirrors and reflective surfaces as the man keeps talking. "If this was your last… birthday party you were ever gonna have, how would you celebrate it?" The wall is glass, but the light is so low that the reflection is nonexistent.
I glance at the man sadly. Miss Natalia pauses for a second, as if thinking, but the silence comes off as more reassuring than pondering. "I'd do whatever I wanted to do, with whoever I wanted to do it with." Miss Natalia stands up and walks out another door. I jerk back with a small gasp and press myself against the wall, mentally berating myself for making a noise. As Miss Natalia rounds the corner at the other end of the hall, I hear the man sigh. When I step out from my hiding place, he's drinking from a funny shaped glass like an upside down cone.
"Hello." I bite my lip just a little, and then wince when the man inhales sharply and starts coughing his drink back into the glass. "Sorry."
"Holy shi- umm, crap kid." He says when he's done coughing.
"I- sorry. Just sorry. Are you alright? I didn't mean to startle you." I walk towards him a bit. He coughs a few more times and then sets the glass down on the table next to him.
"Yeah, I'm just fine. I'm sorry, who are you and how did you get in here?" He raises a judging eyebrow, but doesn't signal for security or anything to remove me so I keep walking forward. "And is that a British accent?"
"I know Miss Natal-ie." I hide a wince at the slip up. "And I slipped the legal Agent that was supposed to be watching me. And yes, it is a British accent, although that may have something to do with the fact that I'm from England."
"Uh huh." The man gives me a funny look and sticks his tongue in his cheek for a second. Then he leans forward to put his elbows on his knees, and I see a dark blue patchwork of lines covering his chest and neck. "And your name is?" I snap my eyes up to his face and work to ignore whatever strange affliction is coloring his skin.
"Legally, my name is Sophie Evans. But my birth given name and the one I prefer is Jasmine Potter. Had a bit of a mix up with the orphanage when my Aunt dropped me off." I shrug.
"Right." The man clearly doesn't believe me, but I'm starting to get annoyed with his lack of answers. I have to fight the urge to pout my lip and stomp, but I'm unsuccessful in keeping my arms from crossing.
"Well?!" I say to him, one eyebrow raises like Miss Natalia taught me. I'm about two steps away from him now.
"Well what?" He's visually taken aback.
"What's your name?! I haven't a clue, and it's very rude to keep a conversation going so long without introducing yourself. Didn't you know?"
"I'm Tony. Tony Stark."
"The one with a doctorate in engineering physics and another in artificial intelligence?"
"Umm, yes, actually." Dr. Tony blinks in surprise. "How, exactly, did you know that?" Before he can answer, Miss Natalia storms in, closely followed by a huffing and puffing Agent 9.
"There you are, Jasmine!" Miss Natalia exclaims. I turn around sharply and press my back against Mr. Tony's wrist, slipping his watch off quickly. "You," She turns around to give a frightening glare to Agent 9, "Are very lucky she didn't get a hold of any knives this time."
"This time?!" Dr. Tony squeaks. Miss Natalia whips her head to me with a very scary glare. I smile nervously.
Miss Natalia gives me a search over while Dr. Tony squawks questions at her. When she pulls his watch out of the pocket on my leggins, Miss Natalia is understandably very mad.
"I just wanted to investigate how the watch works! It looks cool!"
"Jasmine-!"
"It's alright, she can keep it." Dr. Tony assures with a smile.
"He said I can keep it!" I chirp, snatching the watch back as Miss Natalia turns to glare at Dr. Tony.
"Here kiddo, take this too and go have some fun." Dr. Tony hands me a small kit that I don't try to investigate while in front of a still irate Miss Natalia.
"You," she turns to Agent 9, "Are fired. Report and send in a replacement."
Agent 9 gulps and nods, scurrying off. They run into a shrimpy man in the hallway as they leave. He addresses Miss Natalia with a stiff nod and a nervous gulp. "Burke, here to watch the kid?"
"Good." She barely looks at him, instead linking arms with Dr. Tony and walking out quickly.
Agent 10 follows me easily back to the room where I was supposed to be sitting in the first place. Whenever I move or make a sound, he twitches.
The manic giggling while I take apart the watch with the tiny watch kit Dr. Tony gave me probably doesn't help, but I'm thoroughly entertained. Miss Natalia comes in after a while to check on me, but doesn't stay longer than ten seconds because there's a couple of very loud crashes down the hall. She threatens Agent 10 with dismemberment if I am in any other location when she comes back, and then the battery for the watch explodes on the coffee table.
Agent 10 wets himself and then faints. I grab his phone from the table and call Mr. Clint.
That's all for now, please let me know if you liked it! Hopefully the style doesn't feel too rushed or anything now. I'll probably come back and fix this up a bit some time later this week, but for now this is where we're at. Next chapter is more of Tony and Iron Man II, which I have about half written (and have for a while). I'll probably put more in that chapter than I originally planned and then start with alternate forms of narration for the chapter following that. Lots of love everyone!