You Could Make a Case for That

It's always kind of amazing to me just how arrogant Tony is. He decides he should be in control of a global peacekeeping system--twice!, lies to his teammates about his plans, and hides his crimes because apparently laws don't apply to him. But the worst thing is that Tony never seems to think anything he does can go wrong. He doesn't build failsafe switches into any of his suits or AIs. If he did, Hammer and Vanko couldn't have taken over Rhodey's War Machine suit and Ultron (or at least the Iron Legion he was controlling) could have been stopped with the flick of a switch. Not to mention preventing Karen's and Edith's murderous tendencies. What if someone with actual smarts had access to Tony's stuff?

Note: Parker is from Leverage, not Peter Parker. Set after Iron Man 3. I'm figuring because Tony didn't bother to shut down the War Machine suit, he didn't use a failsafe on the suits he destroyed at the end. He gave them commands to overheat or something.

Parker was disappointed. She thought a multi-billionaire would invest a little more in security. There wasn't even a laser grid! It seemed Stark relied on his Jarvis computer person to do all of his security for him.

She asked Hardison, "Now that you've seen what Stark is up to, what are you going to do? Maybe you can make Jarvis your geek buddy and ask him to make sure nobody does the bad things."

Hardison looked over at Parker with a sigh. He said, "It's not gonna be that easy, Parker. Jarvis is kind of the problem."

At Parker's confused look, Hardison said, "Jarvis--and according to these files, ALL or Stark's backup AIs--they're kind of like..."

He gestured for Parker to come stand near him. Hardison pointed at the scrolling lines of code and said, "I guess you could think of Stark's inventions--his suits and his AIs--like very complicated locks. Think about when you're cracking a safe. If you do the right combination of moves, the lock trips, right?"

Parker nodded. The lock ALWAYS opens up for her.

Hardison said, "And that's cool if it's just gold bars or diamonds or bags of cash. But Stark, he didn't even put locks on his stuff...and his stuff is DANGEROUS. You saw what happened to the President."

Parker asked, "So how are you going to make sure nobody can get to them? Or they can't get to be bad?"

Hardison started typing and replied, "Well, what would you do if the lock melted while you were in the middle of picking it?"

Parker glanced over and said, "You better not melt any of my locks."

Hardison grinned and nudged Parker with an elbow. He said, "You know I'd never do that."

Parker smiled, because she DID know. Hardison would NEVER do that to her.

She asked, "How are you going to make his locks melt?"

Hardison said, "I'm adding a sub-routine that's going to be added to anything Stark programs. If certain things happen, we melt the lock. If other things happen, well...we melt EVERYTHING."

Parker nodded and left Hardison to build his mini-flame throwers into Stark's code. She wanted to find SOMETHING shiny to make this trip worth her while.

Tony rubbed his hands as he got ready to start the program to upload Ultron through Loki's scepter. He wasn't sure exactly what he was doing or what the scepter could do. But he KNEW that he wasn't going to let the others prevent him from putting Ultron in charge of global security--whether the world wanted it or not.

He flicked the switch.

Suddenly everything shut down and an alarm started blaring.

The Avengers--the ones who DIDN'T know about Bruce and Tony's plan--rushed into the room.

A voice no one recognized said, "Okay, yeah, um, I got this." The voice cleared its throat and said, "Avengers, represent. State your names for the record--please."

The others looked at each other. Steve said, "Steve Rogers."

Natasha shrugged and said, "Natasha Romanov."

After everyone stated their names, the voice said, "Wow, you're all here. I'm like, sorry I can't shake your hands. Or get autographs or photos or something. Right, so...here's the deal. You don't know me, but let's just call me a concerned member of the Uber-Geek Squad. Your man here, Stark, he's trying to upload a program that will turn the Iron Legion over to a SERIOUSLY messed-up AI. That didn't even have a built-in OFF SWITCH. And it looks like he's using some pretty shady alien tech to do it. Any of that sound familiar?"

Thor glared at Tony and Bruce and said, "You asked to STUDY the scepter. Nothing more." He yanked the scepter free.

Tony lifted his chin and said, "Don't you get it? Earth NEEDS this."

Steve frowned and said, "If it's so necessary, why didn't you mention it to anyone?"

Bruce said, "Because he knew you'd all say No."

Natasha frowned and asked, "Then why did you go along with it?"

Bruce looked away and shrugged. Then he said, "Whoever you are, thanks for stepping in."

Clint said, "Yeah, I have no idea what's going on, but I get the feeling we owe you a beer."

Tony crossed his arms and said, "What he's going to get is an ass-kicking from Iron Man."

Suddenly a voice growled, "Don't even try, Stark. You've got some very distinctive weak points that you do NOT want punched."

The first voice said, "Hey man, thanks for the support. Fist bump."

Maria Hill asked, "So what exactly did you do? And what's going to happen?"

The voice said, "Right now, the Ultron program is being turned into mush. Along with some other really creepy plans Stark had cooking on the back burner. But I did leave enough evidence if you want to go all Law & Order on him."

Everyone looked at Tony with distrust.

Steve said, "Thanks to you and your team. I get the feeling this day would have ended very badly without your intervention."

The voice said, "Just doing our part, Cap. Signing off."

Without Ultron, Sokovia and the rest of the world were safe. The twins eventually realized that Strucker had lied to them and what they thought was Shield was actually Hydra. They eventually came to America and joined the Avengers.

Tony was closely monitored for the rest of his life to make sure he didn't pull any more stunts.

The Leverage crew was sitting in the brew pub one day when Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and Natasha Romanov came in. So Hardison did get to shake their hands and get autographs while the Avengers thanked the team for preventing Tony from creating Ultron.

Parker was just disappointed Thor wasn't with them. She was hoping for a chance to steal the hammer.