Tony had been sitting in that meeting for what felt like forever before the room started to shake.
“Stark! What’s going on?” Cap yelled.
He rolled his eyes and steadied himself using the table as another tremour passed through.
“Why the hell would I know Mr. Frosty? I’ve been here just as long as you!”
“Oh I don’t know! It might be because last time there was an ‘earthquake’ in the tower it was because someone forgot about an experiment in his lab!”
Tony was about to bite back a retort before Nat interrupted.
“Boys! Maybe now is not the best time?”
And just as they fell silent the rattling of the glasses on the table stopped.
Tony breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well I sure am glad that’s ove-“
Purple-black sparks appeared in the middle of meeting room and a split second later they enveloped the table in a miniature wormhole, spat out a small, humanoid figure and vanished leaving the being standing on top of the table and the Avengers cowering behind chairs.
—————————————
Tony slowly peeked his head out from behind his chosen hiding spot and got a glimpse of the guy on the table, spotting a weird old-fashioned gas-mask-looking gadget covering their face and an odd cape trailing down behind them. He ducked back down.
“FRI.”
He hissed at his watch.
“Activate Protocol Baddie-Break-In.”
He activated his gauntlet around his hand and stood, taking some deep breaths to settle himself.
Pep is in Japan he reminded himself. Pep is safe.
In the corner of his vision he saw Nat standing too, her widow bites lit up and pointed at the stranger.
“Look,” he called out, “I don’t know who in the Badassium you think you are but I’ll have you know that this was a very important and very interesting meeting you have interrupted here so if you could please state your purpose and preferably surrender so we can all go get pizza or something that would be much appreciated.”
The figure turned their head towards Tony and he gulped. They then looked down and seemed to have a conversation with themselves.
Tony glanced at Bruce who was now stood as well.
Sure hope this doesn’t require a Code Green. We only just finished rebuilding after last time Big Green was let out.
The person seemed to shake their head a little before reaching up to their face slowly, as if to show their actions were not harmful. He followed them with his gauntlet anyway just in case.
They pressed a button on the side of their mask and it trickled away into a device similar to a hearing-aid on the side of their head.
Nanotech, Tony thought, impressive. Before all traces of comprehensible thought left his brain as the being raised their head and showed their face.
…Pete?