Lost
Lost
The problem was, that Tony didn’t know how to not adopt a stray when he saw one. Was he just supposed to ignore that kitten he saw abandoned in an ally while walking towards his regular café? Or that sparrow he saw with a gash on its wing? Or the ginormous green ball of fluff who was afraid of himself? Or that righteous captain out of time who felt like he didn’t belong anywhere? Or ……….you know, you get the gist of it.
Rhodey teased him mercilessly for it.
To which Tony’s highly intelligent and mature response was sticking out his tongue at him.
Rhodey cackled like some old lady on weed.
Gosh, Tony really loved him. He couldn’t say it enough.
The second problem was that Tony did not have even a single shred of self preservation. He danced in the fire with explosives in hand, so to speak.
This problem must have taken off at least a good 10 years of Rhodey and Pepper, with worrying so much after him.
All too soon, the Stark tower, or rather the Avengers tower now, was home to some of the most dangerous people on the planet. Tony should have known mixing potassium and water would only result in an explosion.
That was another problem.Tony Stark had never met a bad idea he couldn’t love at the first glance.
Yes, Tony Stark had a lot of problems. It came as a package deal along with being a genius who liked to challenge the the working of the universe every step of the way. Stability was the enemy of change and progress. It was his mantra. Let his engineer status be damned if he didn’t question the working of things as they were.
It was by sheer willpower and his inability to give up ( also his charisma, let it never be said Tony Stark did not have an ego that reached new heights everyday. Rhodey said it was only a mask. Tony believed otherwise, so screw Rhodey and his never ending wisdom. ), that he managed to contain the explosion that were the avengers, which resulted in something extraordinarily beautiful. A bond, one might even call it a family.
It was 5am when Tony woke up to a buzzing sound in the movie room, with his head pillowed in Clint’s lap and his legs thrown carelessly over Natasha’s legs. Someone had covered him with a blanket. On looking around, Tony found that all of them were soundly sleeping. It made something soft and warm bloom in Tony’s chest, seeing how far they had come from barely tolerating each others presence and blowing up within a second, to such an extent that they trusted each other enough that they could sleep freely among each other. Tony had never felt more at peace with himself.
The vibration of his phone pulled him away from his internal musings. Natasha sleepily grumbled something about being off-duty on Sundays. Tony hushed her softly, placed a kiss on her forehead and silently headed out to the balcony. The sky was cloudy and heavy winds were blowing. There was a storm coming.
There were 7 messages and 3 missed calls from Pepper. Before he had time to even open the messages, his phone started vibrating again. It was Pepper calling him.
Weird, he thought. Pepper was supposed to be in Paris at the launching of a new SI product from the prosthetics devision. He had succeeded in embedding nano-particals with biotic cells (with the help of Dr. Cho of course). He was a novice in genetics and biotic studies when compared to Dr. Cho’s expertise in this field. Their collaboration had opened up a plethora of possibilities for the future of prosthetics. But the hardest part was bringing it to the public eye. It was new and different, and it’s working extremely hard to understand for those who were not well versed in the field of nanotechnology. And people tended to be afraid of things they didn’t understand or consider as regular. The launch had to be perfect, for the WHO to accept it. It was a brilliant design really. All the required individual would have to do was go through a body scan to determine the dimensions of the prosthetic appendage, which would form a hologram. Next, a sample of the individual’s blood (3 ml) would be integrated with the biotic nano-particles, and finally the appendage would be constructed with meticulous perfection. All this procedure would be seen over by his medical assistant AI CHEM, so there were no possibilities of human error. Tony and Dr. Cho had worked very hard to perfect this piece of technology. The implications of this application were revolutionary.
This event was extremely important and Pepper wouldn’t call unless it was something urgent. The only reason he was not there with Pepper was because he had drawn himself ragged with his duties as an Avenger and SI duties and besides, he trusted Pepper more than he trusted himself to carry out the task perfectly.
“Morning Pep”, he greeted, worried. His voice scratchy from sleep. “Everything alright?”
“Tony, thank god!” The relief in her voice was palpable. “I’ve been trying to contact you from so long. We’ve got a problem. The vacuum tank for the biotic cells got damaged during transport and there is a steady leak of air into it. Tony! The event is starting in 6 hours. What do you suggest we do?”
Tony rubbed his eyes in exhaustion. Weird, he thought. He had made the tanks extremely durable, and had run multiple rigorous tests to make sure they did not get damaged. Huh. Maybe he missed out on some part. He would have to make better casings for the tanks if they got damaged on transport. But right now, repairing the damage was not an option. There wasn’t anyone in Paris who could repair the tank within 6 hours and the biotic particles would already be contaminated by now with exposure to air. The tank had to be replaced.
“Ok. Ok, we can do this. Don’t worry Pep. I’ll get a new tank there immediately. I’ll bring it myself. I should reach in 5 hours approximately. Don’t let the news spread till then. We can’t have the world knowing there was a malfunction before we even launched the project. I’ll be there immediately.”
“Alright Tony, take care. And come quick.”
“Yeah. Bye. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Great! Another problem. Couldn’t he have at least one bland day! He looked back in the movie room. Everyone was still sound asleep. Even Steve had taken a day off and not gone on his usual morning run. He felt extremely guilty for leaving for some reason, but he brushed the feeling off.
Tony turned to go get ready, and crashed right into Bucky. Bucky caught him before he could fall.
“Easy there thumblina. What’s up? You are not someone who’s generally up at this time of the day.”
“Good save my man. And don’t call me thumblina. I gotta go to Paris. Some emergency with the new product launch. I should be back within 2 days.” Tony tried to pat Buckys shoulder but only managed to reach slightly above his elbow. Bucky’s eyes looked a little troubled. “You alright Bucks? Where ya off to at this ungodly hour?”
Bucky just smiled. “Just nightmares. Don’t worry about it. Nothing a good morning jog can’t cure.”
Tony saw the war raging in Bucky’s eyes and nodded with understanding. “Alrighty then Buckaroo. I’ll see you later. Bye.”
“Bye Tony! Have a safe flight.” Tony watched as Bucky stepped into the elevator and headed off for his morning run. His large stature reminded Tony of Steve.
Last night’s argument with Steve crossed across his mind. He could not even remember what it was about. All he wanted to do now was cuddle up with Steve and sleep. But he didn’t want to wake him up right now. Steve could use some sleep after being up for most of the night. He would call Steve as soon as he landed. Tony shook himself out of his stupor. He had more important matters to attend to right now.
He set his coffee to brew and quickly showered and got changed. Tony looked impeccable as ever in his chic black suit and trousers. In no time at all he had grabbed his passport, loaded the vacuum tank into the quintjet and was ready for take off. With his coffee in hand, he felt ready to take over the world.
Exactly 3 hours and 57 minutes later, he landed at the VIP runway at the Paris airport. Pepper was already waiting for him in the car.
————Line Break————
Natasha was peacefully drifting in and out of consciousness. There was a sense of security she felt around these men that she had never experienced before.
She was vaguely aware of Tony’s phone ringing and Tony heading out of the movie room. She drifted off again immediately.
It was some time later, she could not have said how long, her senses started tingling. It was eerily quiet. The sound of NY traffic never got in due to sound proof windows, but she could not even hear the steady hum of the water moving through the pipes that prevented the super-conductors (that were used for raw data storage and computational purposes) from overheating.
Suddenly she was on high alert. Jarvis was down. Anyone who could take down Jarvis was as dangerous an enemy as any.
She never would have believed that Jarvis had such a huge physical base had Tony not showed her. But then again, she thought, they were so awed by the frontend itself, that no one gave a second thought about the backend. It was a huge metal box the size of a bus. Each side was smooth, polished, the whole thing surrounded by a network of gleaming silver pipes forming an elaborate grid around it. This was the physical manifestation of Jarvis, where all the raw data was stored, filtered and the infinite probabilities were computed in parallel pipelining. When she had asked Tony why it was stored in the tower and not on the cloud or in the middle of some desert, he had told her it was extremely risky and he preferred to have the plot closer to home base. He had said as much with a certain spark in his eyes that made her vary.
Natasha could feel the darkness on her eyelids. There were no windows in the movie room, so it was always pitch black. The perfect environment for watching a movie. She kept her breathing steady and tried to locate the threat with her eyes closed. There was a slight moment across the couch. She would not have noticed it had she not been a highly trained assassin. Clint was up too.
The silence made her skin crawl. The only sound she could hear was the shallow breaths of her teammates. Her hand slowly crept towards the hidden knife strapped at her thigh. She grabbed a hold of the hilt. Her body was coiled tight, ready to spring into action at a moments notice. All she had to do now was to wait for someone to make the first move.
A creak. Someone had entered the room. It happened all at once.
Natasha saw a shadow slip into the room, right beside the TV screen. She flung her knife at it. Clint pulled out a gun from his side and pointed it right where Natasha had seen the shadow. Thor grabbed mjolnir, thunder cracked in the distance. Steve poised himself in front of Bruce.
There was an indigent cry from behind the TV screen. Crookshanks was not up for being attacked when she only came in for cuddles. They all let put a collective breath. Steve lifted the cat up by the scruff of her neck and set her on his shoulder.
Natasha scanned the room. She couldn't sense any immediate danger in the room. Steve passed her gun from the hidden compartment by his side. At high alert they stepped out of the movie room and made their way to the common room. The weather was cloudy and there was barely any sunlight seeping through.
“Where’re Tony and Bucky?” Clint asked.
She could make out Steve’s figure carefully examining something in the kitchen.
“You got something Steve?” Bruce murmured as he took out his cell phone to cast light over the piece of paper Steve was meticulously looking at.
Crookshanks leaped from Steve’s shoulder onto the kitchen counter. Thor poured milk in a bowl and placed it in front of her.
“Tony’s in Paris. Apparently there was some malfunctioning of the biotic tank.” Steve read out from the note in his hand. “Oh and Bucky had gone for his morning run. He should be back by now.” His face looked conflicted.
Natasha remembered Tony coming to her fuming at 3.30 in the night, cussing Steve to the best of his abilities. She hadn’t asked him what happened, just let him blow his anger out. Then she’s rounded everyone up in the movie room and they’d sat to watch The Lion King. Tony had refused to sit beside Steve. Natasha thought their lovers spat was cute. Thor’s voice brought her back to the present.
“Well that’s a good thing right? It means he’s safe.” Even when he spoke softly, Thor’s voice echoed across the quietness of the room.
Natasha knew it was too good to be true. What was the probability that Jarvis was taken down the same time Tony left the country. Someone wanted him out of their way.
“Unless the note has been forged and he’s been kidnaped. Someone call him, quick.”
Bruce took out his phone to call Tony. “No signal. That’s weird. Tony had made sure our phones always have connection. Check your phone guys.”
Natasha checked her phone. No signal. She desperately hoped Tony was unharmed.
“The communication is down. Oh boy! Today is going to be one long day!” If only Clint knew how correct he was.
Natasha walked past Steve to the lamp on the far end of the wall. The Transfiguration by Raphael was hanging underneath it. Tony thought there would be poetic justice in having a hidden compartment behind that painting. She lift it 3 inches up and rotated it 37 degrees to the left. As soon as she did that, a chic black box fell out.
Natasha attached the microphone to her ear and passed the box to Clint. Steve pocketed the spare microphones that would have been for Tony and Bucky.
These microphones did not work on the basic satellite communication channels. They self-generated communication signals and channels. Top side to this was it was impossible to hack. But like all good things, it had a drawback. It did not have a very long range. But it would do for now, as long as they didn’t stray very far from each other. Natasha hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.
Lightning streaked across the window and hit a tree. Natasha observed everyone as they secured their microphones. Steve looked like he was seconds away from blowing a gasket. She couldn’t blame him. Had her boyfriend disappeared, she would have been terrified too. Someone needed to take action and it wasn’t going to be Steve right now.
“Let’s look around guys, see if we can find anything suspicious or any signs of struggle.” Natasha took charge.
“Clint go with Steve and check Tony’s floor. Bruce, you go with Thor and see if you see anything in the gymming area or Tony’s workshop. I’ll check the lower floors and see if I can find anything.”
Steve gave her a grateful look and headed up with Clint.
Natasha headed down the stairs, checking one floor at a time. She could not spot anything out of the ordinary anywhere.
“Nothing out of the ordinary here guys.” Bruce’s voice filtered through the device in her ear.
“Nothing here either. Natasha?” That was Steve.
“No noth-” Natasha’s reply was interrupted by her sharp intake of breath.
“Nat! What happened? Are you okay? We are heading down right now. Nat! Do you copy? Natasha!” Natasha could hear the sound of hurried footsteps echoing across the microphone, but she could not bring herself to answer.
Natasha could not believe her eyes. She didn’t even understand the implications of what had happened. The only person who would understand what was going on right now was in Paris, with no way to contact him.
Right in from of her, where the huge metal box of Jarvis should be, there was nothing. Someone had stolen Jarvis.