Disarm • Stark

The last thing any seven-year-old ever wants to do is sit in their room, doing math. Unfortunately for Mazzy, that was the very thing she was stuck doing. Algebra, nevertheless. Solving for X was maybe even worse than fractions. No, they were worse than fractions because algebra could include fractions. Algebra already sucked by itself, but it also had fractions to add to that suckiness.

It was sort of fun, though, because Mazzy got to this homework in her new bedroom. Her bedroom in California was a bit boring considering she'd been living there her whole life, but her bedroom in Stark Tower was more fun because she hadn't stayed there before. They were there that night, however, because Tony was setting up a clean source of energy for the new building.

Mazzy wasn't the least bit interested in this new arc reactor that was powering the building. She wasn't at all interested in whatever she could hear Pepper and Tony arguing about from the living room, either, until she heard an unfamiliar voice enter the conversation.

Glady, Mazzy dropped her pencil on her desk and shot up out of her chair, making her way to the living room. The first thing she heard upon entering the room was Pepper joyfully greeting the stranger with a smile on her face. "Phil! Come in."

Phil? Who was this guy? And why did Mazzy recognize his name?

"Phil?" Tony murmured, scrunching his face up with distaste. He stood up from the floor and quickly followed after Pepper to meet Phil by the door. "Uh, his first name is agent."

That made a bit more sense. He must have been a Shield agent. That was probably why Mazzy recognized his name.

Mazzy jumped onto the couch and stood on her knees to watch the whole interaction. What did Phil- or Agent, rather- have to say that was so urgent to the point that he had to hack into their tower?

Pepper, unlike Tony, didn't seem at all phased as she happily invited Phil to join them. "We're celebrating," she said. Mazzy didn't know they were celebrating. All she knew was that she was supposed to be doing her algebra work.

"Which is why he can't stay," Tony said. He glanced over at Mazzy, raising his eyebrows. "And why I sent you to your room," he said, pointing a finger at her. Mazzy gave him an exaggerated, toothy smile.

Tony rolled his eyes and turned back to Phil, who held a big black folder in his hands. From the looks of it, Tony was about to get involved with something he had zero interest in getting involved with. "We need you to look this over as soon as possible," Phil said. He held the folder out to Tony, who looked at it like it was some sort of bomb or something.

Mistake number one.

"Um, I don't like to be handed things," Tony said, making it very clear that he did not like Phil being there.

"He doesn't like being handed things," Mazzy echoed, pressing her lips together.

Phil gave both Starks a confused look.

"That's fine," Pepper interrupted, reaching for the folder, "because I love to be handed things. So, let's trade." Phil gave her the folder and Pepper gave him her champagne glass. Then, Pepper placed the folder in Tony's hands and took his champagne glass.

Dad glared at Phil as he said, "Official consulting hours are between 8 and 5 every other Thursday." He was making it up on the spot, very obviously. Mazzy didn't understand why he wanted to be Iron Man so badly if he didn't want any work to do.

"This isn't a consultation," Phil told him.

Mazzy leaned off the side of the couch. "Ooh! Is this about the Avengers Initiative?!" she asked enthusiastically.

She hadn't stopped asking about the super secret boy band since that morning at the donut shop. She was desperate to see Natasha again, but Tony insisted he keep her far from the Avengers. The last thing he wanted was for her to be involved in any of that. It was hard, though, because when things came up, he couldn't exactly leave her home alone. Fury promised, however, that they wouldn't ask anything of her. Tony prayed he would keep that promise.

Tony turned to Mazzy, snapped his fingers, pointed at her, and raised his eyebrows. That was something he did when he wanted her to stop saying whatever she was saying. Mazzy smacked her hand over her mouth. She forgot she wasn't ever supposed to talk about the Avengers Initiative unless her dad said so.

"Which I know nothing about," Pepper said, trying to save both Mazzy and Tony. Technically, since Pepper wasn't in that donut shop at six in the morning, she wasn't supposed to know about the Avengers Initiative.

Tony walked off to find a place for the folders that he was more than likely not even going to look at, if Mazzy had to guess. "The Avengers Initiative was scrapped, I thought," he said.

"Plus, you didn't even get in," Mazzy said, assuming the man named Phil already figured out that neither of the two Starks could be trusted with top-secret information.

"I didn't know that either," Pepper said pointlessly.

"Yeah, apparently, I'm volatile, self-obsessed, don't play well with others," Tony said from where he stood across the room, typing something into a laptop.

"That I did know," Pepper chimed, cocking her head to the side.

"I knew that, too," Mazzy said, nodding her head.

"This isn't about personality profiles anymore," Phil said, focusing more on Tony than anyone else in the room.

"Whatever," Tony said before gesturing over to Pepper. "Ms. Potts, got a second?"

Pepper went over to stand next to him and he started talking to her, but Mazzy couldn't hear what they were saying. She figured it was probably just Tony complaining about something stupid, as per usual. Then, suddenly, screens appeared around the room. The screens showed multiple strange-looking people- or, at least they looked strange in Mazzy's opinion.

"Holy cow," Mazzy said in awe, getting up to look closer. She pointed at one of the screens. "Why's this guy green?" She pointed to another screen. "And how come this guy's throwing around a big, Fourth-of-July-themed dish plate?"

None of her questions were answered, unfortunately. She thought that maybe the green man was attacked by a leprechaun. She had heard about leprechauns doing sneaky things like that in school classrooms on St. Patrick's Day.

But Pepper seemed less curious and more concerned as she watched the screen. Apparently, she didn't think the strange people were as cool as Mazzy did. She let out a soft breath. "I'm going to take the jet to DC tonight," she said.

"Tomorrow," Tony suggested.

"You have homework," Pepper told him.

"You can hang out with me," Mazzy offered.

"You also have homework," Pepper reminded her. Mazzy narrowed her eyes, frowning. She had hoped that they had forgotten about the homework.

Then, Mazzy couldn't quite hear as Tony and Pepper started mumbling quietly to each other. It must have been something good, though, based on Tony's reaction, Mazzy thought.

"Square deal. Fly safe," Tony said with a nod as soon as Pepper finished. Mazzy was confused. Did she promise him a box of Cosmic Brownies or something? That's what always got Mazzy to do her homework.

Pepper smiled at Tony and leaned in to kiss him. Mazzy cringed as she realized they were flirting again. Flirting was a new word. It meant that they were in love with each other and they wanted to kiss each other. Gross.

"Get a room!" Mazzy shouted. She had learned that one from Rhodey, which neither Pepper nor Tony were too thrilled about. In Rhodey's defense, Mazzy used the phrase far more than he ever could have expected.

Rolling her eyes, Pepper pulled away from Tony. "Work hard," she said before walking off toward the elevator. She left with Phil, talking about some cellist, whatever that was.

Once they were gone, Tony turned his attention to a blue, glowing cube displayed on the screen in front of him.

"What the heck is that? Some magic Rubik's cube or something?" Mazzy asked, getting up to stand beside him.

"Yeah, some magic Rubik's cube or something," Tony replied, staring at the cube. He glanced down at her, scrunching his eyebrows. "What time is it? Shouldn't you be in bed?" he asked.

"I don't know. Maybe," Mazzy said, shrugging her shoulders. Truth was, she should have been in bed a little over an hour ago, but she didn't want to be, and no one else was noticing, so she figured it wouldn't be so bad to stay up. Especially if she was doing homework before because that's a good thing.

Tony checked the time on his watch, then looked back at Mazzy, pressing his lips together. "You're definitely supposed to be asleep," he told her.

"Oh, man," Mazzy huffed, frowning up at him.

"I have work to do, anyway. Come on," Tony said, picking her up and holding her on his hip. Reluctantly, Mazzy wrapped her arms around his shoulders cooperatively. "You can hear all about the magic Rubik's cube tomorrow."

"Phooey," Mazzy murmured.

Tony pulled his head away to look at her, giving her a very judgemental look. "Who is teaching you all of these old people phrases?" he asked.

Mazzy only shrugged, slightly smirking with amusement as Tony carried her the rest of the way to her bedroom.

•

Mazzy spent the next 24 hours doing whatever it was that she pleased, considering that her dad was all too preoccupied with studying whatever material Agent Coulson had brought over to provide even a little bit of supervision. With her newfound freedom, Mazzy decided she would eat as much ice cream as she could find in the freezers. She had an entire box of chocolate ice cream with whipped cream and Hershey's syrup layered on top. Along with that, she had exactly three and a half Bomb Pops. Only half of the fourth Bomb Pop because, as soon as she got halfway through it, she was running to the bathroom to barf it all up.

It was when Mazzy was leaning over the toilet, spewing out half her body mass in ice cream, when her dad found her and tossed her shoes on the floor next to her.

"Oh, gross," Tony said, furrowing his eyebrows once he realized what she was doing leaning over the toilet bowl. Nevertheless, he knelt down beside her and gathered her hair into a ponytail. "What happened? Are you sick?" he asked, feeling a bit guilty for putting all his attention on his work for enough time for his daughter to be puking in the bathroom without him having a single clue.

"Think I had too much ice cream," Mazzy sputtered, spitting out her bad-tasting saliva.

"Well, how much did you have?" Tony asked, grabbing a towel for her to use to wipe her face.

"Not that much," Mazzy lied. She didn't want him to take away her ice cream privileges.

"Not that much, huh?" Tony scoffed, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. Mazzy nodded, confirming it. "Jarvis," Tony called out. "How much ice cream did she eat?"

"All of it, sir," Jarvis answered. Mazzy furrowed her eyebrows, frowning. Why would Jarvis rat her out like that?! "And several popsicles," Jarvis added.

"He's a liar!" Mazzy insisted, shaking her head.

"Y'know what? We'll deal with that later. You're not sick, so we gotta go," Tony said. He grabbed her shoes from the floor and placed them in front of her. "Put your shoes on and come on," he said, standing back up and leaving the bathroom.

Once he was gone, Mazzy began putting her shoes on, muttering insults about Jarvis under her breath. When her shoes were tied, she went out to the living room only to see her dad waiting for her in his Iron Man suit. Instantly, she stopped in her tracks, shaking her head. "Uh-uh," she said, thinking back to Rhodey flying her away from the drones before they exploded. "I don't wanna fly."

"Well, Maz, I have to go and fight some space magician and I can't legally leave you here alone," Tony told her, pressing his lips together. He waved his fingers toward himself.

"I can be home alone," Mazzy insisted, holding her hands on her hips.

"Oh, yeah? That's why you were just throwing up ice cream in the toilet, right?"

"Well- but-" Mazzy couldn't defend herself there, so she decided to come up with another argument. "You're going to bring me to the space magician?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"No, I'm gonna bring you to a jet that is above the space magician," Tony said before quickly grabbing Mazzy and shooting them off the ground. Mazzy shrieked, clinging to her dad for dear life and squeezing her eyes shut as they flew out of Stark Tower. Of course, Tony would never let her fall, but she was scared about it, anyway.

The two of them flew across the city and Tony started talking to someone through coms that Mazzy couldn't hear. Tony flew them up behind a jet in the sky and the back opened up. Without a word of explanation, he set Mazzy down inside the jet before flying off again, leaving her behind in the jet.

Turning around, Mazzy recognized a familiar head of dark red hair at the front of the jet, flying the aircraft. It was the one and only Natasha Romanoff. "Natasha Romanoff!" Mazzy exclaimed with excitement, rushing forward to the chair.

"Hey, sweetheart," Natasha greeted her, keeping her focus on flying the jet. "Love the ponytail."

"It's my puking hair-do," Mazzy told her. She leaned over her shoulder and watched the fight happening down below them. The man from the screen the other day- the one with the patriotic dish plate- was fighting who Mazzy assumed to be the space magician. The space magician wore some weird, big horns on his helmet. "Where on Earth do these guys get their costumes from?" Mazzy asked, scrunching her face up at the choice of outfit.

"He's not from Earth," Natasha informed her.

"Oh, yeah. Space magician," Mazzy realized. She watched the fight continue below, wondering when her dad was going to join in and save the day.

It looked like the space magician had the upper hand, and then Tony's voice came through the speaker system in the jet. "Agent Romanoff," he said, making the red-haired woman look a little confused, "You miss me?" The screen in front of Natasha informed her of the PA system being overridden before one of Tony's favorite songs started blasting through the speakers. Shoot to Thrill by AC/DC. Classic.

Mazzy watched with wide eyes as her dad flew down and blasted the space magician to the ground before landing in a super awesome superhero pose. She cheered him on from the jet and Natasha rolled her eyes.

Tony aimed all of his weapons at the space magician before saying, "Make your move, Reindeer Games." The space magician, AKA Reindeer Games, held his hands up and his weird horns began to disappear from his head. Tony lowered his weapons. "Good move."

Now that the space magician was dealt with, Natasha landed the jet next to where the other three were on the ground. Tony and the Patriotic Dish Plate Man marched into the jet with the space magician in custody.

"That was awesome," Mazzy said to her dad, a large smile plastered on her face. Of course, she would rather have been at home, downing another Bomb Pop, but this was pretty cool, too. "When do I get an Iron Man suit?" Mazzy asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Hm, let me think about it," Tony said. He tapped his chin for a moment before feigning realization. "Oh, yeah. Never," he said as he pushed the space magician down into one of the seats. Mazzy furrowed her eyebrows at him. "Go sit over there," Tony said to Mazzy, nodding to a seat on the opposite side of the jet, further away from the stranger in custody.

"How come I can't sit next to the space magician?" Mazzy argued, crossing her arms. "I wanna know how he made his antlers disappear."

"How's it feel to want?" Tony asked her before sternly pointing over to the seat on the opposite side. Mazzy huffed, but did as she was told. She figured he was probably right. It was best that she didn't sit next to the man who just tried to kill a bunch of people.

Mazzy sat in the chair, kicking her legs back and forth as Tony and the Patriotic Dish Plate Man stood behind Natasha. The space magician glared at her from his spot. Mazzy glared back at him before turning to listen in on the good guys' conversation.

The first thing she heard was her dad calling Patriotic Dish Plate Man an older fellow.

"You're old?" Mazzy asked the man. He didn't have any wrinkles on his face, he stood tall, he was strong, and he had short, blond hair. He looked even younger than Tony did, in Mazzy's opinion. "You don't look old," Mazzy told him.

The blonde man looked at her, his eyebrows knitted together before turning back to Tony. Mazzy pressed her lips into a thin line, slightly annoyed by his lack of a response.

"Yeah, what's your thing? Pilates?" Tony asked the man.

"What?" Patriotic Dish Plate Man asked, clearly having no idea what he was talking about.

"It's like calisthenics. You might've missed a couple things," Tony told him. Mazzy wasn't sure what he meant by that. "You know, doing time as a Capsicle." Now she was even more confused.

"Capsicle?" Mazzy asked. What on Earth did that word mean? Despite her question, she got no answer from either of them as they stared at each other intimidatingly. This was weird, Mazzy thought. Why did it seem like they didn't like each other?

"Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in," Patriotic Dish Plate Man said. Gosh, he looked familiar. Mazzy wished she could remember where she knew him from.

"Yeah, there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you," Tony told the man. Why didn't Fury tell Patriotic Dish Plate Man things? And why hadn't Mazzy asked for his actual name yet?

"Patriotic Dish Plate Man, what is your name?" Mazzy asked, raising her eyebrows at him. Tony smirked at her nickname for the blond man, but the blond man didn't respond. Mazzy thought that maybe he didn't know that Patriotic Dish Plate Man was him.

"Hey, Patriotic Dish Plate Man," Tony said as he tapped the blond man's chest. "Are you ignoring my daughter?" Mazzy could tell her dad was being mockingly instigative, but the blond man looked surprised.

"I'm Patriotic Dish Plate Man?" he asked, his brows raised as he turned to look at Mazzy. She nodded as if it were obvious. "My name is Steve Rogers. What is your name?"

Boring name compared to Patriotic Dish Plate Man, Mazzy thought to herself, pressing her lips together disappointedly.

"I'm Mazzy Stark," she told Steve, despite her disappointment. Mazzy thought Steve spoke a bit like an animatronic at a museum would. It was strange. She looked over to the space magician and was about to ask his name as well, but then lightning started to strike around them and she tensed in her seat, going silent.

"Where's this coming from?" Natasha asked her copilot. The jet shook a little bit, but not that much. It wasn't really that scary to any of the adults, but the space magician looked afraid.

"What's the matter?" Steve asked, noticing the space magician's fear. "You scared of a little lightning?"

"I'm not overly fond of what follows," the space magician spoke with a British-sounding accent, which was strange because Mazzy thought he was from space. Did people in space have British accents?

"You're British?" Mazzy asked, confused. She turned to her dad, giving him a confused and betrayed look. "You said he was a space magician! Not a British magician!"

"He is from space," Tony insisted. "Fury said he came through a portal!"

"Portals can come from anywhere!" Mazzy argued.

Tony was about to argue something back, but he stopped when a thump came from the top of the jet, making the whole thing shake. Mazzy brought her knees up to her chest, squeezing them tightly with her arms as Tony quickly grabbed his helmet and Steve grabbed his mask and patriotic dish plate- or shield, rather. Tony opened the door and started to walk out the back of the jet.

"What are you doing?" Steve asked him.

Then, out of nowhere, another blond man wearing another strange outfit landed on the open door. He had long, flowing hair and carried a large hammer in his right hand. Mazzy's eyes widened, both intrigued and a bit afraid. She got up out of her seat, backing closer to where Natasha was.

The blond man began marching forward, preparing to use his oversized hammer as a weapon as Tony's thrusters began to power up. Before Tony could send a blast the blond man's way, he hit him with his hammer and grabbed the space magician. He ripped him out of his seat and held him by the throat. Mazzy gasped, grabbing onto Natasha's arm. The blond man grabbed the magician and jumped out of the jet. He flew through the clouds as lightning struck around him and thunder rumbled.

Tony sighed and stood back up. "And now there's that guy," he complained, marching back towards the open door again.

"Another Asgardian?" Natasha asked.

"Asgardian?" Mazzy mumbled. She thought he was British! She didn't even know what an Asgardian was.

"That guy's a friendly?" Steve questioned.

"It doesn't matter. If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost," Tony said.

Loki. Mazzy assumed that that was the space magician's name. She thought it was a weird name, but maybe it was normal on Asgard.

Whether the name Loki was normal or not, Tony was set on getting the guy back. He marched toward the back of the jet where the two Asgardians had disappeared from.

"Stark! We need a plan of attack!" Steve yelled as Tony approached the exit of the jet.

Tony paused and turned back to look at them. "I have a plan," he said. Mazzy raised her eyebrows. "Attack."

With that, Tony blasted out the door, leaving Steve staring in annoyance.

"Oh, brother," Mazzy huffed. She just wanted to go home and eat some more Bomb Pops.

Steve huffed out a sigh, grabbing what Mazzy thought was a parachute. Natasha, though, stayed where she was seated, right next to Mazzy. "I'd sit this one out, Cap," she said.

Cap. Mazzy thought it over in her head, trying to remember where she recognized the man from. Steve. Steve Rogers. Cap. Cap. Captain America! The man was Captain America! Mazzy couldn't believe how long it took her to realize it.

"I don't see how I can," Steve told Natasha, strapping on the parachute.

"These guys come from legend. They're basically gods," Natasha warned him.

"There's only one God, ma'am. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that," Steve said before grabbing his shield and jumping out of the jet, following after Tony and the Asgardians.

Mazzy turned to look at Natasha. "You can really tell he was born in the early 1900s."