A/N
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Now, on with the shindig:
Tony stared down at the holographic screen in front of him. More specifically, at the security camera photo he had forwarded over to Fury's… secretary? Second in command? He supposed it didn't matter for the moment, all told.
"Jarvis, I really don't like what I'm looking at."
"Neither do I, sir."
He ran a hand through his hair. "Dad was convinced Hydra was gone, but I guess they really stuck to that 'two heads for every one lost' thing, huh? Either that, or they should really change their sticker to a cockroach."
After finding that video that his dad left him on the Stark Expo tape, Tony had stopped fidgeting in anger at any mention of his father. He still didn't forgive the bastard - he didn't think anything could bring him to do that, but, well… he could let bygones be bygones, now.
He scratched at his chest absently, at the spot that used to hold his arc reactor. He had since upgraded to a new design - new fuel, using the element his father's theory outlined. And lord was that hidden in the dumbest place possible. If Tony was just the tiniest bit less awesome, he wouldn't have been able to put that puzzle together.
A molecular diagram, hidden in the Expo park map? The hell, dad?
He still wasn't particularly sure what to think about the reactor removal that led to that whole discovery. Pepper got him to attend therapy after that whole thing, somehow. He, for the life of him, couldn't figure out how she managed to trick him into it, but it… helped. How is one supposed to react to a teenage wizard breaking into their house, only to save their life from radiation poisoning in the most violating way possible?
The therapist said that anger would be a 'valid' response. He told the lady that he felt empty. Tired. Then she asked him why he didn't want to remove the reactor.
He got annoyed there, saying that it was the only thing keeping him alive, but she pointed out that he could have gotten the bomb shrapnel surgically removed at any point up until then, but didn't.
Over the next hour, she forced him to acknowledge that he didn't actually want it gone. Through some convoluted desire to suffer for his "Merchant of Death" days, or in remembrance of Yinsen in that cave, or whatever else might have been the root of it. He hadn't been ready to move on from it, and the fact that there wasn't even a scar, made it feel like one big, bad dream. Before that, it felt like he had started to make headway into atoning, but the magical surgery felt like a big, fat, "Nope" to everything he had started to work towards.
So he felt hollow. Empty.
The therapist said that was valid, too. Then he got up, left, and never scheduled a second session.
He could only delude himself for so long, he supposed. He did feel a bit more clear-headed for having talked it through. He also admitted that he liked how the lady was clinical about breaking his thoughts down. Took none of his shit, and just pointed out the problem with no judgment or condescension.
He might let Pepper schedule another session. Maybe next year, or something? His October in 2013 looked free for the moment…
Anyway, with the arc reactor now removed, he had to think up another way to power his suit. It stuck out a bit too far to just plant it in the chest-piece. He had tried a few different solutions, like the super thin and wide one that took up his entire midsection, or the backpack one. The first was a bit too fragile, and the second too unwieldy - he might have gotten carried away adding too much crap to the backpack, before scrapping it.
He did like the idea of a smoothie maker inside of a suped-up jetpack, and Jarvis couldn't convince him it wasn't genius. No matter what he said. Maybe not as a power source, though. Hard to defend properly, which he learned from Ivan Vanko - who had ripped it off from the rest of the suit with one of his electric whips at a charity auction.
That left him flailing around on the ground in a heavy, un-powered lump of metal before Happy started shooting at the guy with a gun that Tony didn't know he had. Hit Ivan's own arc reactor dead on, making it short out.
That whole thing was a brain-melter. Ugh. Something to jot down for that possible therapy session, maybe?
Though no, six separate plans were scrapped before he settled on putting smaller, half-inch reactors all around the suit. It was ultimately the best of the options, as it helped disperse the energy load, and provided backups in case of failure. He was also now able to utilize nearly quintuple the power, compared to before.
Tony might have put in a few too many, now that he thought about it. Little overkill.
"This could be a different group." Jarvis offered, interrupting Tony's internal rambling. "There's already a precedent for such a resurgence of World War II German ideals."
Tony huffed. "What? Like the Neo-Nazis? A fan group of the original?"
"Can't rule it out yet, sir. We're going off of one picture, for the moment."
The billionaire dragged a hand down his face. "God, I hope you're right." He collapsed into his chair, and spun it around absent-mindedly. "Doesn't change the fact that there's probably a faction of Nazis - 'neo' or not, running around inside a global paramilitary spy organization." He paused, and spun back towards the holographic interface. "Good thing we found the guy who kicked their asses the first time around. Any word on him?"
Jarvis took a moment to respond, performing a search through the Shield files. "Yes." He began hesitantly. "He seems to have woken up healthy and whole this morning."
Tony blinked, and looked up to one of the speakers that his digital butler spoke from. "Well spit it out. What happened?"
"It seems," Jarvis paused. He didn't usually pause like that, "that our impromptu guest surgeon has made another appearance."
A shiver ran up Tony's spine.
He let his head fall on the desk. "What even is today?"
"Tuesday, sir." Jarvis immediately shot back.
Tony groaned. "Okay, okay, mister smartass. What was he doing there? Ripping out Captain America's spleen due to a severe patriotism infection?" He paused. "And what does Shield know about him, anyway?"
"According to Shield's files, his given name is Nathaniel Edward Quill. Born in 1980 to one, Meredith Quill, in Missouri. The file then notes that he was abducted by aliens in 1988, on the day his mother died of a brain tumor, along with his twin brother."
"I'm sorry, what?"
Jarvis ignored him and continued. "Then last year, he appeared again, only to follow various people around for a couple of months. The only clear picture they have of him is when he was waiting in line behind the director, Nick Fury, at a coffee shop. This is his first appearance since then."
"Aliens?"
"This latest appearance consisted of the Captain waking up, and holding a conversation with Mr. Quill."
"He's thirty-one years old?" Tony did some quick math. "He looked like, what? Twelve, when he broke into my house?"
"Closer to twenty, sir, but yes Nathan Quill was born in the eighties." Jarvis corrected. "Now, Nathan appears to have stolen Captain Rogers away from his assigned quarters, and they are currently getting a hotdog from a street vendor."
"Hold on, wait. Go back to the alien thing."
"We're well past that, sir."
"I'm not." Tony responded incredulously. "Okay. Jesus. Uh…" He took a moment to digest. Jarvis waited patiently.
"So," he continued, "to summarize, we were the first to meet this guy since he disappeared off the planet-"
"Presumably, yes."
"-then he decided to become some sort of spooky cryptid for a few months, disappeared again until like, four hours ago, where he broke into yet another highly guarded building, and woke up Capsicle?" Tony breathed, and forcefully relaxed his face, as it was starting to contort into something that might make a baby cry. Or laugh hysterically.
He was positive that Jarvis took a picture, and didn't want to give him - and Pepper by extension - more blackmail. The traitors.
"Also correct, sir."
"And he didn't rip out the guy's spleen?"
"It doesn't appear so, no." Tony got the impression that Jarvis would have tilted his head, here. "Though he did give Captain Rogers an apple."
Tony laughed despite himself. "Great, so Rogers gets to 'keep the doctor away' while I-" He stopped and sighed slowly, putting his head back in his hands. "Goddammit."
"Quite." Even Jarvis was shaken by their last experience with Nathan and his AI daughter. They hadn't talked about it, but Tony could tell by the digital construct's fervor in upgrading his system. The billionaire was confident that the same tricks as before wouldn't work again on Jarvis, but that alone didn't give him any real sense of safety, or closure, or any of those other words that his therapist used.
Tony centered himself as much as he could. He didn't want to talk about the wizard surgeon anymore. A thought that the universe agreed with, it seemed, as a ping appeared on one of the searches Jarvis was running.
"It appears," the AI started after a moment, "that one of the persons of interest has just sent an encrypted file to an unknown address. From an unregistered terminal, as well."
"Where?" He asked, scrolling through the logs himself.
"Tracking it now, sir. It appears to be bouncing around different access points across the country."
The two watched the file like a hawk for twelve full minutes - Tony via the logs in front of him, and Jarvis via… however AI's saw it. Tony didn't move a muscle. The only indication he hadn't died sitting up was the fact that he was breathing, and the REM sleep impression his eyes were enacting as he stared at the screen.
The breathing bit was a bit touch and go, though. He forgot to at least twice, when Jarvis had to exercise some improvisation to try and keep track of it.
Finally, the file seemed to sit at a destination. No movement, no more bouncing, no more proxies or temporary servers.
"Where is this, Jarvis? Did you manage to intercept?" Tony's hands raced across his keyboard, making sure their tracks were clear, and pinging Fury's secretary/secret agent friend they had been going through.
"I corrupted the file, sir, but I couldn't empty, or copy it before it arrived. The path it took seemed to use keys within the encryption. The destination also has some rather serious defenses. It will take me some time to crack through."
Tony frowned. "Where?"
"New Jersey, sir. An old Shield facility that was a converted military base from World War II, called Camp Lehigh."
Clint Barton was having a day.
Fury had him sitting on top of a building in New York all morning, and told him to keep a bird's eye view over one of the Shield facilities. Apparently Captain-friggan-America was supposed to wake up today, and Clint was supposed to keep an eye out in case some bullshit happened.
Well some bullshit happened, and now Clint was tasked with following the bullshit around the whole city as he ate hotdogs with Captain-friggan-America.
The bullshit - or rather, Nathan Quill, was an annoyingly familiar figure to everyone in Shield above Level 5 clearance. Clint in particular, since the bastard had apparently been chilling behind him at Mjolnir's crash site, up in his lookout.
Also, Thor's-friggan-hammer, Mjolnir.
Yeah, he wasn't over that. It had been a few years, and he was still having trouble coming to terms with a confirmed god's existence. He had grown up Christian - not a particularly good Christian, if his career was any indication - and had been leaning decidedly atheist for most of his life.
He had dealt with a lot of weird crap while working with Shield, but that hammer was the weirdest. At least until a day after Thor himself took the hammer back like a super magnet from half a state away, when he learned about the seidhr - or the more colloquial term, wizard - that motherfucking Thor mentioned offhandedly. A wizard that had apparently been standing directly behind him without him noticing.
It took until last year to figure out who the wizard was, and that was only because the creepy bastard posed for the camera while stalking everyone.
That brought him to his current problem: tracking the wizard as he teleported around the city with a perfectly willing Captain-friggan-America.
Clint didn't know how to teleport. He could do a little parkour, sure, but that didn't mean he could traverse New York well enough to keep up. He was a normal guy. A normal guy that was weirdly good with an unconventional weapon, sure, but Thor(apparently) dammit, what did Fury want from him?
The only reason he was able to track them at all, was because Fury hand handed Captain-friggan-America a phone with an active GPS signal. However each time he had started to close on their location, the bullshit would teleport them to the complete other side of the city. He knew they were screwing with him at this point, and it was getting exhausting.
"Barton." Fury broke in on his earpiece as he landed on top of an office building.
"Here, sir."
"Get back to base. We have a situation."
"Yes sir."
Clint was having a day.
A/N
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