Chapter 4
Now nobody was sitting and almost everybody was shouting.
"What!. Why?" The Iron Man, War Machine, and Rescue suits were all also stirring slightly in their powered-down states like sleepers registering the sense of possible danger.
"Loki explain." Thunder rumbled outside rattling the windows. Thor's hold on the smaller demi-god turned into the kind that a person who had just had their dog or their child try to run into traffic would use.
"You two planned this!"
"Uh uh, no way,the two princesses are not allowed to plan stuff together! We made it a rule and everything."
From downstairs a bellow from the Hulk echoed up in spite of the layers of very good soundproofing.
" I refer Man-of-Iron to not being informed of the level of danger you would be in, which evidently exists given our companions unsettled reactions, while in the hands of midgard healers." A single contemptuous twist and the trickster god had freed himself and re-located to across the room.
Many people unaware of how a real soulbond actually works might have gotten confused by their situation unable to understand how someone could keep things secret from people who's souls and minds are connected to theirs. First off there is a such thing as privacy and personal boundaries- the bonds don't eliminate a person's individual self and not giving a person any privacy whatsoever would be incredible rude....not to mention embarrassingly unpleasant on both sides since there are things one doesn't want to be aware of every detail of. And just as other people who are in a physical romantic relationship aren't actively having sexual intercourse at every single second so too are the bonds not always going 'full on'. Plus both the mind and the soul are intricate and complex with lots of layers and twists.
"So somebody beat your unbeatable programing and this leads you to conclude you need heart surgery?"
"Gah! Don't say beat! They did not beat me! But I'm supposed to be the best.....So how come every fricking time I turn around some two-bit nutjob or government agency too-secret-to-exist is rooting around in my personal innards!"
" My apologies Sir-!"
" Not Your Fault, J."
"Tony how could you have kept something like this from us...again!"
"What are the authorities doing about?"
" Nothing. He didn't report it." Pepper and Phil would have both known it if he had.
" Godsdammit Tony, why not!"
" Ooo, keep that up and you're going to lose your Mr. Purity image there, Steve!" The fact that the blond supersoldier had reached over and covered Peter's young ears before he'd uttered the word just made it all the better a comeback.
" Tony has nothing other than a suspicion to offer them. With no solid proof there is nothing we can give them to make a case."
" And believe me if there had been anything Pepper would have already have sicced several bushels of the lawyers on it."
" The lawyers don't come in bushels Tony. We have war fleets." The metaphor, established private joke/reference, or whatever the Pepper was using may have escaped some of them, Steve included, with its specifics but the implications were all too clearly stated. Stark, and Stark Industries( and excetra) had a lot of legal support and were not afraid to use them to attack.
" The cowardly challenger needs be smited!"
" That was the plan. Wasn't it Tony?"
With someone like Steve, Happy, Rhodey, or Thor an opponent would likely to be confronted directly and openly( though thankfully they do also understand the necessities of things like bluffing, feigning, stealth, and other sneakier advantages in a confrontation). Phil, Clint, and Natasha tend to make those they deem 'an issue' disappear. But Tony and Loki, as well as Pepper, were seasoned professionals and victors in the 'high-societies' 'own version of the mercilessly cruel struggle for survival that was comparatively as nasty an environment as any criminal organization's, or outcasts' and dregs'( and though the 'blood' they spill is usually metaphorical and in the form of wealth and reputation it is no less devastating for those 'destroyed').
Tony's grin was evil. "Way too many people who'd like me dead know I've got a bad ticker and that the best way to put me down is to pull out my battery. So we'll make that method obsolete while setting up the perfect bait, namely poor widdle moa, for the hacker to try and hit again!"
" Only this time he'll land right in the magical trap Loki and Jarvis are setting."
" Like a fly into a spider-web. Only hopefully with less body fluids."