Chapter Text
Tony drained his coffee mug and glanced around the shabby mobile office with distaste. Lucy was busy with Darcy’s phone, but at least she’d stopped nattering away at boring-sounding people about their equally boring-sounding families at breakneck speed and with little apparent point. He was almost hoping someone would notice the stolen trailer, parked barely five miles from the blast site, and start a fight. Anything to relieve the monotony.
“I get the feeling I really should have seen this coming,” Tony sighed. “I mean, you did say Phase Two of all your plans turns into a rolling dumpster fire.”
“I never said that,” Lucy told him without looking up from the phone, “and this is more like Phase One of a different prong, so that doesn’t count. Also? Not even close to a rolling dumpster fire, by my standards. For one thing, nothing’s actually on fire.”
“JARVIS?” Tony prompted smugly.
A muffled recording of Lucy’s voice began playing. “My plans don’t have phases, because I’m capable of learning from experience, and none of them ever make it to phase two without getting horribly derailed.”
“You just have that thing running all the time? Just picking up everything, filing it away for later?” Lucy asked. “Creepy.”
“It’s not creepy, it’s sensible.”
“Do your friends and loved ones know about it?”
Tony squirmed a little. “They know about JARVIS.”
“Do they know your creepy robot is creeping on them every time they’re within earshot of you?” she persisted.
“JARVIS isn’t creeping on them,” Tony said defensively. He was collecting data that Tony would otherwise miss, and making sure it was entered into the appropriate calendars with a reasonable window for reminders.
“If you can’t answer the question, it’s creepy.” She crossed her arms. “And also? You’re an asshole. Do something useful and make another pot of coffee, asshole.”
“You’ve spent the last three hours--”
“One hour.”
“JARVIS?”
“Three hours and twenty-one minutes, sir.”
Tony pointed at her triumphantly. “Ha!”
“Like I’m going to trust your weird robot henchman with the stopwatch,” Lucy snorted, her eyes narrowing. “Of course he’s going to back you up.”
“As I was saying, you spend the last three hours on the phone catching up with old pals, and I’m the asshole?” He got to his feet, and the trailer’s floor creaked ominously. Maybe it was a good thing Steve wasn’t around to add to the stress on the thin panels and brittle rivets. “We’re supposed to be saving the world. And I’m only making another pot of coffee because I want more coffee. It has nothing to do with you sounding almost disappointed about things not being actually on fire.”
“It’s not polite to go around pointing out all the times people totally said shit they forgot they told you,” Lucy said, finally looking up. “So yes, I’m calling you an asshole. And you know you can go home, right? After you make the coffee, obviously, but nobody actually needs you here. Go make out with your hot girlfriend and take her out for absurdly tiny portions of massively overpriced food at some place with a string of unprounceable symbols instead of a name and a kitchen full of exploited labor and neglect to tell her your knockoff Siri is creeping on everything the entire time.”
Tony walked gingerly back to the tiny kitchen midway between the broken-down sofa that hadn’t been done any favors by the weight of his suit and the bedroom-turned-meeting room Darcy had claimed as a tech center. The idea of leaving her and Darcy to their own devices with a potential threat of that magnitude bearing down on the planet made him shudder.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but my vacation home is in Martha’s Vineyard, not another dimension. So really, if you’re going to be dicking around instead of doing something useful, I think somebody more responsible than Jane Foster’s unpaid minion should be here to pick up the slack.”
Lucy rubbed her eyes and sat up straight. “You built yourself a personal rocket suit. You don’t get to call yourself more responsible than someone who, to date, hasn’t done that.”
“I built myself a personal rocket suit that works flawlessly, whenever you’re not around to screw with it. She attacked a god with something she bought at a department store. Twice.” Tony glanced at the closed door. “What’s she doing in there, anyway? More pointless chit-chat?”
“Department stores at least quality-test,” Lucy pointed out, ignoring his question. “And here’s the thing, Stark.” She scrolled through her contacts list. “When people call you for help, and you haven’t heard from them in a while, are you more likely or less likely to help them if they at least pretend to give a shit about whatever’s going on in your life before they ask?”
“Well, my time is valuable, and I don’t enjoy gloating, so I’d actually prefer they just cut to the chase so I can get off the phone and back to saving the world.” Tony rolled his hand in a get-on-with-it gesture. “Like we should be doing, say, right now. Instead of camping out in a shitty mining company’s stolen, shitty trailer drinking shitty coffee in my third least-favorite state.”
“You have favorite and least-favorite states?” Lucy asked, pursing her lips.
“Do you not?” He blinked at her. “You always struck me as the sort of person who really would.”
“Didn’t you specifically request some senator who’d been a dick to you pin a medal on you in that public circlejerk after your stuff went rogue at your expo and wrecked up your convention center?” Lucy reminded him. She got to her feet and twisted until her spine popped.
“And that’s the one and only time I’ve ever enjoyed a good gloat,” Tony said, smiling blithely at her. “I tried it, I didn’t care for it, and I moved on with my personal development.”
He got the coffee out of the particle-board cabinet and shook it. There was barely enough left for another pot, and he was tempted to just call the tower. There was no real reason it had to be him babysitting the operation instead of Steve. If Steve tapped him out, he could probably talk Pepper into hitting the beach, and then neither of them would have to worry about the floor giving way.
“I guess I just run with a crowd of less advanced beings, because when I haven’t talked to somebody for over a year, they want a little ego-fluffing before they want the opportunity to exchange a comparatively small sum of money for a good shot at being brutally murdered for selling out HYDRA.” Lucy waved a hand, and the canister was suddenly full again. “And maybe the coffee wouldn’t be so shitty if it wasn’t so shittily made, Stark.”
“Who doesn’t want to sell out HYDRA?” Tony asked, frowning. “At the drop of a hat, I mean? They’re assholes. Like, real assholes, not what you seem to think passes for being an asshole.”
“Generally?” she asked. “People who work for it. They would like to continue, you know, drawing a paycheck and not being shot in the face for treachery.”
“People who work for HYDRA are definitely less advanced beings,” Tony grunted. “Except maybe in the technological or killing-for-fun senses.”
“I guess it’s a little hard to dispute that one. But you know, if the price is right and they’re reasonably sure they won’t get caught, that also means most of their employees will roll on them.” Lucy walked out the door and leaned on the wall directly outside the kitchen window before lighting a cigarette. She shot him a fake smile through the screen. “Fortunately, the same goes for just about every other douchenozzle globo-corp out there. We should have the financials on all our likely suspects by five o’clock local time.”
“You know, when I asked you to at least smoke outside, I was thinking more like that fifty feet from the entrance rule, not somewhere you can still carry on a conversation from.” Tony scowled at her. “It’s bad enough you made me drive that stupid tar-coated cannon-truck instead of just towing this thing.”
“This thing wouldn’t have stood up to you towing it, and I for one don’t feel like doing all this shit outside,” Lucy sighed.
“We could find a nice climate-controlled SHIELD facility,” he said. He made a face at the canister. “I don’t really want to drink magic coffee, do I?”
“I can’t possibly be more dangerous than boozing your way through a guided-missile demonstration in a war-torn hellhole.” Lucy took a long drag. “And I figure for this stage, the less chance of this getting traced back to SHIELD, the better. Even if it shakes out right, it’s going to start a category five shitstorm. You might be able to score another mind-control hall-pass, but I think they’re pissed enough at me for the moment.”
Tony shook his head. He still wasn’t entirely sure he believed them. Or maybe it was the Asgardians he didn’t believe. He’d trust Thor with his life, but Thor was off enjoying his honeymoon, and all the surreptitious texting of the last three hours had failed to get an answer out of him.
“You really think HYDRA’s switched from wanting to take over the world to wanting to destroy it?” he asked.
“As an overarching organization? No. Maybe some tiny rogue splinter cell within HYDRA? Sure.” Lucy shrugged and squinted against a sudden gust of wind. The whole trailer rocked under Tony’s feet, and he grimaced at the shoddy manufacturing. The whole thing felt like it had been made out of a nickel’s worth of aluminum and a roll of duct tape.
“Hell,” she continued, “it probably happens more often than anybody knows. It’s not like wanting to blow up the planet is any likelier to coincide with competence than, say, wanting to be mayor of Albuquerque. They never get close to doing it, nobody outside the inner circle hears about it. I ever tell you about the time I was part of a pick-up team recruited by some hedge-fund manager who wanted to find El Dorado?”
“Is that where you got the money to bribe contacts in a half-dozen major criminal enterprises all over the world? Somebody at Lehman Brothers close enough to indictment that they had to pony up some hush money?” It made a certain amount of sense. He’d meant enough of their top talent to stop being surprised when the next one turned out to be crazy as a shithouse rat.
“Something like that,” Lucy chuckled. She finished the cigarette and ground out the butt, and a shower of grit followed her back inside. “How well did you attach that satellite dish?”
“The welding’s fine. It’s the roof it’s attached to we have to worry about,” Tony sighed. He glanced at her, his eyes hard. “You aren’t planning to use this to convince me you’ve really been a good person all along and to put in a good word for you with Hill, are you?”
Lucy steepled her fingers and pressed them to her lips for a moment as she watched him like she was figuring her odds.
“Sweet monkey Jesus, you’re serious,” she said finally, shaking her head. “There’s like zero chance Hill’s going to listen to you about anything. You’re only a couple of rungs up from me in her book.”
“That’s not humanly possible! Hill loves me. She comes to all my parties.”
Lucy cocked her head. “You crash-landed on the Porsche she’d literally just paid off. Doing ‘sick stunts’ for ‘the youtube,’ if I heard right.”
“I did not crash-land on her…” Tony took a deep breath, the color draining from his face. “Oh my god, that was hers?”
The car had been perfect and gorgeous and he could still hear the crunch of glass and metal when he’d stalled out and done a belly-flop right on the roof.
“That’s what I heard,” Lucy said, snorting.
“Wait.” Tony glared at her. “Heard from who?”
“Pym.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Hank did not tell you that. Hank doesn’t tell you anything. Hank is in therapy because you’re so horrible.”
“That’s just a cover story for hitting the bar during lunch and complaining about the latest stupid thing you did trying to win a bet with Barton,” Lucy said, examining her fingernails. She picked a business card out from under the couch and started cleaning soot out from under them with the edges.
“That’s the least-plausible lie you’ve ever told me.”
“It really isn’t.” She fake-smiled at him.
Tony stopped and frowned suddenly. “Wait, I replaced that Porsche with a brand new one. Same color and everything.”
“I think it was the principle of the thing. She’d probably named it or something.” Lucy shrugged. “Anyway, no, I’m not trying to trick you into thinking I’m a good person, or that I’ve reformed, or any of that bullshit. Like I said, I’m here because I got hired to be here, and because not being here seems like a really irreversibly terrible idea.” Lucy twisted her fingers and produced a credit card from thin air. “Also? When I said ‘something like that,’ I meant ‘you’re bankrolling this.’”
“Is that really why Darcy called me? So I could comp everything?” Tony groused, snatching at the card. Pepper was going to kill him when she got the bill for this.
The floor gave way under him, leaving him knee-deep in insulation, and Tony wondered if he could hire someone to lightly savage the designer and blame it on Lucy.
The card vanished again, and she smiled thinly. “Maybe next time don’t apologize to X-People about stuff I’m not sorry for.”
Tony glowered at her, then sighed and began trying to extract himself from the floor without making the problem worse.
“I’m not sorry I told the woman who can make it rain ice bowling balls that you’re sorry about whatever it was, exactly, that you framed one of her biggest gal-pals for.”
“Oh, shit.” Lucy’s eyebrows went up. “They’re sleeping together? Since when?” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “Spill it.”
“No? Or at least, I don’t think so?” Tony’s brows furrowed as he ran through all the rumors he’d heard. “They’re just friends?”
“I don’t think gal-pals means what you think it means,” Lucy told him, chuckling.
He looked stricken. “But Pepper’s got tons of gal-pals.”
“Does she call them that?” she asked.
“No.”
“Does she like laugh and say ‘you wish’ when you call them that?” she prompted.
“Yes?” He sank deeper through the floor, until his feet touched the ground.
“Are you asking me or are you telling me?” Lucy asked. She leaned back and crossed her arms, watching as his attempts to leverage himself back out of the hole in the floor resulted in palm-sized chunks of thinly-carpeted sheet metal collapsing around him.
“Well, she doesn’t literally do that, but she does give me a kind of judgmental look and shake her head and then pour herself a really strong drink.”
“And that never struck you as, I don’t know, a little weird?”
Tony rested his arms on the floor and gave her a long look.
“Okay, yes,” Lucy sighed, rolling her eyes. “Question retracted on the grounds of being incredibly stupid. That’s probably her default response to ninety percent of the shit you pull, isn’t it? It’s just you telling her about your day and her staring at you and pouring more and more booze into her glass.”
“It did actually strike me as just the teensiest bit weird.” Tony rubbed his chin. “Maybe about one tenth as weird as me having to find this out from you. Can I please have that card back? Before she finds out you’re paying fucking AIM with it? And I get that response on steroids?”
“Not until I’m done with it. And I’m not paying AIM directly. What sort of fucking idiot would funnel their bribe through the storefront of the company they’re betraying?”
“Well...”
“It was rhetorical, Stark, oh my god.” She rolled her eyes. “My guess would be that at least half the charges are going to show up as adult entertainment companies, though, so…” Lucy paused. “I could order her some flowers and a crate of top-shelf vodka, while I’m at it. Or is she a gin girl?”
“Please do not do anything that’s going to impede my ability to explain that it’s all you and Darcy’s fault,” Tony said. “Please.”
“I should probably do Lewis the solid of saying that I don’t think I mentioned this specific part of the plan when I was busy not being able to ditch her at various truck stops and gas stations.” Lucy jerked her chin at the closed door. “That girl’s like some sort of precognitive limpet, honestly. Every time you think you’ve scraped her off, bam. She’s hanging on tighter than ever and you don’t even know how she got back in the car.”
“I think it might have something to do with you jumping out of that cab while it was doing forty in Vegas,” Tony pointed out. “She still seemed kind of pissed about it when Fury called us on the carpet for the whole ‘Who Wants to Marry an Asgardian?’ thing.”
“Oh, yeah.” Lucy made a face. “In my defense, she kept trying to feed me.”
“You don’t have to defend yourself to me,” Tony assured her. “I already think you’re a genuinely and irretrievably terrible person.”
“Aw.” Lucy wrinkled her nose. “That’s the sweetest thing an Avenger who doesn’t think they’re related to me because of an undiagnosed head injury has ever said to me.” Tony made a point of scratching his cheek with his middle finger. “Anyway, because I’m feeling extraordinarily generous, feel free to think of this--and explain it to your girlfriend--as a legitimate business transaction.”
“Because this way I get to have a business that exists on a planet that exists?” Tony grunted.
“Because we may have...appropriated the last shipment of vibranium out of the mine that’s now a big crater.” Lucy spread her hands, then dropped one to rap sharply on the horizontal filing cabinet bolted to the trailer’s wall. “And with the prices on vibranium already skyrocketing and some lingering personal problems with the lone legitimate supplier, I’m thinking that if that were to somehow wind up in Stark Industries’s inventory, you’d be sitting on a pretty solid investment in materials. One that would,” she flipped the credit card out again, “more than cover what I’m spending on intel right now making sure that yes, you get to have a business that exists on a planet that exists. Sound good?”
“Sounds less awful than most of your plans, yes.” Tony pursed his lips. “Maybe. I guess we’ll see what we find when your guy crunches the numbers and comes up with someone to hit really hard. I’m personally holding out for HYDRA.”
“My guy?” Lucy said slowly.
“You do have a guy for this, right? That accounts-ninja? Steve’s pen-pals with his daughter?” Tony stopped. “Pen-pals still means just pen-pals, right? I don’t have to have a long, awkward conversation about appropriate mentor-mentee relationships to Captain America, do I?”
“I have an accountant who does my taxes and handles my inevitable audits and is currently not speaking to me outside of things that pertain strictly to my existing business relationship with him.” Lucy puffed out her cheeks. “I was kind of thinking that we could take this big pile of financial data to Wasp, actually. See what she makes of it.”
“Your accountant isn’t speaking to you.”
“Except for, you know, my taxes.”
“Why isn’t your accountant speaking to you?” Tony demanded.
“Why do you care why my accountant isn’t speaking to me?” Lucy asked. “I mean, you probably don’t speak to your accountants, like, ever, and I don’t care why that is.”
“Yeah, but when my accountants aren’t speaking to me, it’s for perfectly normal accountant reasons, like I just bought out a company with terrible record-keeping and a long history of financial improprieties which also isn’t profitable,” he said, bracing his hands on the floor and trying again with no better results. “When your accountant isn’t speaking to you, it’s probably for some super-embarrassing reason, like you slept with his wife.”
“I would never!” Lucy gasped. “And also she’s straight as a fucking arrow.”
“If you tell me why he’s not speaking to you, I’ll tell Jan this whole thing was my idea.”
“If I do something I don’t want to do, you’ll take credit for me doing something heroic?” Lucy picked at her teeth. “That’s dumb, even by your standards.”
“But doing something heroic at this point would just be the last nail hammered right into your reputation’s coffin, wouldn’t it?” Tony asked reasonably. “Just think. ‘Lucy Jones saves the world.’ Make a great headline, wouldn’t it? I’m pretty sure I own at least one newspaper. I could make it happen.”
“Yes, that whole one dude who still reads newspapers would question my credibility, and we can’t have that,” she snorted. “Weren’t you literally just telling me about how you don’t gloat?”
“Being around you is making me backslide. It’s terrible. Pepper’s right about you being a bad influence.”
“Pepper’s a very smart woman, and you should listen to her and leave me alone as quickly as possible,” Lucy told him.
“Come on. I already know you’re shady, and a trainwreck, and capable of the pettiest bullshit this side of Strange enchanting a fire hydrant to follow Dormammu’s car around NYC and keep getting it towed. How much worse could this be?” Tony wheedled. “Also, any time you feel like helping me out here would be great.”
“Fine.” Lucy stalked around him, surveying the damage to the floor. She crouched until she was at eve-level with him. “So long as you can answer one question.”
“I’m not telling you any state secrets,” Tony warned, suddenly nervous.
“You don’t know any state secrets,” she reminded him. “Nobody in their right mind would trust you with a state secret.”
“Did you have a question or not?” he snapped.
“What the fuck does an extradimensional entity whose head is on fire like all the fucking time need with a goddamned car?”
Tony pressed his lips together. “Apparently, someone told him that’s how you get earth-chicks.”
She cocked her head. “Does that tone mean something, or…?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, was that not you?” Tony asked. She considered the question for a moment.
“The closest I’ve ever gotten to doing anything that could even remotely pass for that is breaking a bottle over Ghost Rider’s head, and that was an accident.” Lucy cleared her throat. “Not that I stuck around to explain that to him.”
“Because he’d kick your ass?” Tony asked.
Lucy shrugged. “Maybe? Mostly because feeling bad about things I’ve done makes me itchy, and he’s got that thing he does with his eyes, which shouldn’t work because he doesn’t even have them but it somehow does, where he looks at you like a puppy you just stepped on by accident.”
“That cannot possibly be how that power works,” Tony sighed. Not that he had an alternate theory, but he was sure Strange could help him out with one if he could fire off a text when Lucy wasn’t looking. “So, I held up my end of the deal.”
She shot him a hunted look before caving. “He’s not speaking to me because I accidentally endorsed him when he was running for county commissioner.”
“And you’re not exactly a home-town hero?”
“I am, it might surprise you to hear, something of a divisive figure in local politics.”
“And a little help with this?” Tony gestured vaguely to the floor.
Lucy smiled thinly and waved her hand at him. “I give unto you the power of flight.”
Tony managed to look even more persecuted by life than he had before, which he felt was an accomplishment.
“Not funny. You know what’s going to happen if I fire up the repulsors while I’m wedged in the middle of this deathtrap. Or was that what you were counting on?”
“Well, it would get us to the ‘actually on fire’ part,” Lucy said.
Tony grimaced at her as she straightened and walked away. “How do you accidentally endorse someone? I mean, I’ve endorsed people out of spite before, but it was always deliberate.”
“As it turns out, a local news crew asks you if you think somebody’s an okay person, and you fail to publicly repudiate them. I was trying to endorse him as a businessman and didn’t know he was running for office. As he later pointed out, at length, that information was included in his last newsletter, which I did receive, and this is not the first time a camera crew from that news station has gone around filming gotcha-interviews about local candidates, and I am technically the founder of a super-PAC was a really unfortunate name.” Lucy tapped her fingernails on the table. “So. He does have some just cause to be upset over it.”
“Like I said, you’re a terrible person,” Tony said. “Now, seriously, please help me out of this.”
Lucy took a picture of him instead and looked toward the back room. “Hey, Lewis, how’re you coming with that video?”
“Just about done. Did you guys make more coffee?” Darcy’s voice was muffled by the thin door, and Tony turned around to check on the coffee-maker.
“If she steals the entire pot because I’m stuck in the floor, I will cancel that card,” he promised. “I can do it from the suit, you know.”
“I’ll make her leave you a cup,” Lucy said, picking up a magazine. “Pinky-swear.”
*****
“Okay, I’m finished,” Darcy announced, bursting out of the office. She stopped when she saw Tony halfway through the floor and Lucy thumbing through a copy of Miner’s Weekly. “Jesus, guys. I was only in there for like an hour.”
“Four hours and ten minutes,” JARVIS chirped.
“What?” Darcy’s brows furrowed. “Does he just go around timing things like that?”
“Apparently,” Lucy said.
“Creepy.”
Lucy shot Tony a triumphant look, and Tony pointedly pretended not to notice.
“The construction’s substandard,” he explained.
“He threatened to smear my good name in the press,” Lucy said, pointing at him.
“You deliberately weakened the floor so I’d fall through it, didn’t you?” Tony asked, glaring at her and crossing his arms. The effect was ruined by the necessity of maneuvering them around the flooring, and he compensated by glowering even more sternly.
“No, but her next question is going to be why I didn’t do something, followed by that little noise she makes when she thinks people she’s not in charge of are being unreasonable.”
Darcy huffed and rubbed her forehead.
“See? That noise.”
“You are being unreasonable,” Tony pointed out.
“Will you please get him out of there, and fix the floor, and come take a look at this?” Darcy asked, her tone cold. “Honestly, the pair of you.”
Lucy sighed and stomped over to Tony. “Truce?”
“Truce.” He extended his hand, and Lucy pulled him out of the hole before papering it over with plywood. “That is not going to hold.”
“We shouldn’t be here much longer,” Darcy said, frowning at it. “Right? You got what you needed? I mean, you had way more time than you should have needed.”
The phone chimed, and she checked it quickly.
“Last hold-out just delivered,” she said, nodding. “And no, once that video goes live, we really shouldn’t hang around. This is going to turn into a hot-spot with a quickness.”
“And then we go see Jan and figure out if it worked?” Darcy brightened visibly.
“Well, once somebody finds his balls and texts her.” Lucy shot Tony a scalding look.
“Don’t even start on that again. It’s your fault she’s allergic to the word ‘magic.’ If I show up with this and you, she’s going to throw me out a window.”
“You can fly,” Darcy said reasonably.
“I still don’t see how a video’s going to help you find out who’s trying to unleash an Asgardian hell-monster on all of existence,” Tony muttered, scowling.
Darcy turned her laptop toward them and hit play. “White Wedding” blared over the speakers.
“Billy Idol?” Lucy asked.
“It seemed appropriate,” Darcy said smoothly. Lucy made a face but didn’t object again.
Tony watched as the video rolled through several loops before finding his voice again.
“Jeff von Flagsmasher the Third?” he asked slowly.
“Well, I’ve never heard anything indicating that’s not his name, so…” Lucy shrugged. She looked at Darcy. “I really liked the part where you added the strobe effect when the mannequin dressed like Doom got hit with the electric guitar.”
“Good, because that took a really long time,” Darcy said, her shoulders relaxing. “But I thought it would be worth it.”
“Flag-Smasher’s name isn’t really Jeff, is it?” Tony asked.
“Fuck if I know,” Lucy told him.
“And the confetti-hose with the MODOK pinatas. You understand that that’s going to be taken as a bukake thing, right?” Tony continued.
“Why else would I have used white confetti bits?” Lucy asked.
He rubbed his temples. “I thought you didn’t really shape-shift into guys if you could help it?”
“How would you even--” Lucy sighed and gave Darcy a narrow look. She smiled back innocently. “You know what? I don’t want to know.”
“Volstagg told us,” Darcy confessed.
“Ugh.” Lucy made a face. “Fucking Sif. She’s known that guy for five thousand years, she knows he can’t keep his mouth shut.” She crossed her arms and looked back to Tony. “That’s in a personal setting. Business is a little different. Also, I didn’t. This is what we in the magic business refer to as an illusion. Which is way easier, really.”
“Well, that makes perfect sense, then,” Tony said, nodding as if it did. “Why exactly are you blaming Flag-Smasher for the data breach?”
“Upload it?” Darcy asked. Lucy gave her a thumbs up.
“Because I have to blame somebody--”
“Do you really, though?”
Lucy ran her fingers through her hair and stared at him.
“Are you finished?” she asked.
“I might be,” Tony said after a few seconds.
“Okay. So. If we don’t want them going on a mole-hunt once they realize their data’s out there and then finding out it’s us, then yes, we do kind of need a scapegoat,” Lucy said. “If they think they know who did it, they won’t just go sniffing through their metadata--”
“Not even remotely how to describe that,” Tony pointed out.
“--until they figure it out. As to why I picked ULTIMATUM, that is because their leader’s a douchebag, their motif is stupid, and they owe me one-point-eight million dollars.”
“What, you accepted a down payment on letting them off the island?” Tony demanded. “Why would even think that was a good idea?”
“Yeah, that kind of seems like a bad move,” Darcy said, wincing in sympathy. “Which is a shame, because that’s a lot of money.”
“No, I didn’t accept a down payment. I am not, in fact, an idiot. They paid me in funny-money,” Lucy explained.
“You should have authenticated it first,” Tony said, smirking.
“Yes, I know, mom,” she grunted. “But I didn’t.”
Darcy frowned. “So don’t they owe you two million?”
“I was able to offload it onto a dodgy Australian start-up for two hundred thousand dollars of real currency, though, so I’m willing to be gracious,” Lucy said.
“Except you just put a target on their backs the size of Texas.” Tony tilted his head at the laptop. “Or rather, you had your minion put a target on their backs the size of Texas.”
“I’m not a minion, I’m an intern,” Darcy said firmly.
“Same thing,” they said in unison.
Lucy cleared her throat. “But I was planning on turning them all into human-sized piles of salamanders.”
“Yeah, I don’t know that this is better.” Tony made a face. “I mean, neither one is what I’d do with my Saturday night. But just hanging out in a pond maybe eating some bugs versus a running gun-battle with every organized bad guy on the planet?”
“At least this way they don’t have to worry about chytridiomycosis,” Lucy said.
“But see, they do have to worry about death by gunshot wounds. Which, having been shot at a lot, I can personally testify is not a great way to spend your time.”
Darcy’s brows furrowed, and she closed the laptop. “Isn’t that in their job description already, though?”
“Right?” Lucy nodded. “Also, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a human-sized pile of salamanders try to go around doing human things like depositing a check or driving a car, but believe me, death by gunshot wounds is also a significant risk there, too. People really do not react well to that.”
“And you know this from experience?” Tony asked archly.
Darcy stared at him, and Lucy shook her head.
“Of course you do,” Tony sighed, putting a hand to his face. “I don’t know why I asked that.”
“Seriously,” Darcy said. “And, guys, you do realize I uploaded that video like five minutes ago now, right?”
“Four minutes and sixteen seconds,” JARVIS confirmed.
Lucy shifted her weight from one foot to the other and chafed her arms. “Right. So.”
“We should leave,” Tony prompted.
“Yeah, we really should, shouldn’t we?”
Lucy wrenched the filing cabinet from the wall, the metal creaking as it gave, and broke the locks. Tony blinked when he saw how much vibranium was concealed beneath the fake file folders.
“Well, that’s a hell of a party favor,” he breathed. “And this is all mine?”
“Sure. What am I going to do with it?”
“Sit on a pile of it and taunt people?” Tony hazarded. “I mean, that’s what I’m planning on doing for at least a few months.”
“You’re both awful,” Darcy said, tucking her laptop back into its case and heading for the door. “JARVIS, please call Jan. Tony, please unhitch the trailer. Lucy, please start the truck.”
“Did she just boss us?” Tony asked as the door banged shut.
“And so the student became the master,” Lucy chuckled. “You know what that means, though.”
“What?”
“I’m driving.” Lucy raised her eyebrows and sauntered toward the truck.