When Things Go Bananas
FIVE
When Things Go Bananas
It took a few months after the incident with part of his own suit shanking him for Tony to understand that he wasn’t going to be attacked by his teammates for not doing something they wanted. Granted, the lecture he’d received from Bruce had been as full of disappointment as he’d expected, but somehow not as bad as he had feared. Some of that was probably the fact that Bruce had finished patching him up, then spent the afternoon watching bad scifi movies on the couch with him, where they picked apart the science and laughed at truly terrible CGI. Tony may have also revealed that he had created a not-a-lightsaber.
Jarvis had been forced to blackout the lab when Clint made a run for it.
With the five of them living in the tower together, they began to get to know one another. Tony, despite his concerns, began to open up to these people. He had breakfast with them almost every morning, sometimes even lunch, and he actually gave Bruce a code that would let him in the lab (although Tony could override it if he needed to). As their personal relationships grew stronger, so did their ability to work as a team. They read and anticipated each other’s movements, working more cohesively to take down whatever foe they were facing that day, and even managing to avoid the amount of property damage that had become an unfortunate side effect of New York being the site of a battle. While some destruction was sadly unavoidable, they were able to mitigate a lot of it, and it helped their public image and their relationship with the city.
Because they trusted each other, they began to actually train together and learned what they could do as in-tandem actions. Cap’s shield, for instance, was able to reflect Tony’s repulsor blasts, which was great when Tony needed to hit something out of his immediate reach.
Clint was just as often standing on top of a building as jumping off of one, and while his rappel cable arrows were useful, they were limited in number. As a primarily stationary target, once they learned of his position, enemies tended to go after the archer to get rid of the threat he posed. Not having a rappelling arrow handy did nothing to stop the SHIELD agent from flinging himself from a rooftop and counting on luck to keep him alive. Now, at least, there were others quick enough to interfere, and Clint had even started mentioning that he needed an assist, letting Tony fly over to give him a lift, or Bruce to prove a somewhat soft landing, or backup if Clint just needed help fighting off some attackers.
Natasha was terrifyingly efficient and didn’t often need help. Wielding her taser and guns, she was often looked at as the least threatening in comparison, but Tony was fairly certain that if Loki had gone after her instead of Clint, they all would have died. The assassin was well-capable of taking out the entire Avengers team and then probably their competition as well, possibly without breaking a sweat. That hadn’t stopped Tony grabbing her the one time she had nearly been caught in a stampede of giant mechanical reindeer (and the less Tony thought of that incident, the better).
Tony began to create more tech, some of them for the others, and some to test out for himself. Offhand comments from the others contributed just as much as Tony’s overactive imagination.
One of his favorite incidents came after a battle with a group of gorillas who had been undergoing lab tests. It was something straight out of Planet of the Apes. After they had rounded up the scarily-intelligent gorillas and had them transported back to the laboratory, the Avengers had taken the afternoon off in the form of Mario Kart and about seven boxes of pizza. Clint had just been hit for the fourth time with a banana peel when he threw his controller at Natasha (the one who had released said banana peels while right in front of Clint), and said it was too bad they hadn’t had any of those bananas while facing the gorillas.
That was how Tony ended up in his lab the whole next day, trying to build a banana boomerang. He couldn’t get the angle right for the thing to function as a boomerang, so in a fit of irritation, he ended up programming it to play Raffi’s Bananaphone and stuck a shit-ton of explosives in it.
The fact that he’d had it with him during their next call to assemble was purely accidental. He was pretty sure DUM-E had put it in the pocket of his suit, and he was just glad it hadn’t jammed that rocket closed when he’d been so in need of it.
The thing had fallen out when the pocket had opened and the barrel of his rocket launcher appeared, and he’d grabbed it on instinct, staring at it for a few seconds while the Doombot (why was it always Doombots?) exploded with a metallic shriek of tearing metal.
“Why the fuck do you have a banana, Stark? It’s not snacktime!”
Tony looked up to see Clint, on the clear other side of the battle but somehow still able to see him (he really did see better from a distance), and the mess of Doombots in between them. They had helpfully congregated into a group with the Avengers on the outside. How considerate.
“I always bring a banana to a Doombots battle!” Tony said over the comm, pulling the “stem” of the banana to set the charge. It immediately began to play Bananaphone loudly on a speaker that was probably more high-tech than it needed to be for something that was about to explode.
“Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring banana phone
Ding dong ding dong ding dong ding donana phone
It grows in bunches, I've got my hunches
It's the best! Beats the rest
Cellular, modular, interactivodular~”
The loud music had the benefit of attracting the attention of all the Doombots in the vicinity, and they turned to look at him. Tony picked the one in the center with its eyepiece on the fritz.
“Hey, Cyclops!” he shouted, flinging the banana into the fray. “It’s for you!”
“Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring banana phone
Boop-boo-ba-doo-ba-doop
Ping pong ping pong ping pong ping panana phone
It's no Bologna, it ain't a phony
My cellular bananularBOOM”
The entire conglomeration of Doombots went up in an explosion of fire and shrieking metal. Over top of that was the sound of Clint’s hysterical laughter as the archer fell off the rooftop he had been standing on, trying to sing the Bananaphone lyrics through his cackling. He had, thankfully, been caught by Hulk before he severely injured himself. Hulk set Clint down on the ground, where the archer pounded his hands against the ground with tears pouring down his face.
The other Avengers made their way over, Tony landing beside the laughing Clint and surveying his work.
“That was… effective,” Steve said uncertainly.
Hulk made a sound of agreement above them while Clint wheezed from the ground. “Just a bit of Potassium to help the battle along,” Tony said, grinning behind his mask. “We should consider doing commercials.”
“Bananas are good,” Hulk said, and Clint howled with laughter.
“They sure are, Big Guy. Just not for Doombots.”
Not all the battles were so entertaining, however, or so well-finished. A good number of them had one or more of the Avengers ending up in SHIELD medical, and that didn’t exclude Steve. For all that he was fast at healing, sometimes it was exactly that which had him in medical.
Tony had thought about the detriments of the Super Soldier Serum. There was, of course, the fact that it had allowed Steve to survive being trapped in ice for decades and waking up without any damage to a world where everything and everyone he had known was gone. There was also the question of how long Steve would live. If the serum could reverse cellular breakdown, would Steve even age physically? Or would he just keep going, forever? Would he outlive even Thor?
Tony had thought about the downsides of the serum, but he had never considered that the healing factor itself could be a cause of damage.
The times that he lingered in SHIELD medical was either when he had no choice about the matter or when he was there for one of his teammates. He’d sat around and waited on Bruce to wake up, watched Clint have wounds bandaged and bullets removed from his torso, and in one incident he disliked recalling, sat at Natasha’s bedside and waited to see if she would wake up.
Steve’s healing factor tended to take care of any injuries he had, so he was often there at medical just waiting on everyone else.
Except for the time when his left arm was broken and had healed before it could be set. Tony remembered the way it looked, almost too surreal for his mind, the bone white where it stuck out the side of his arm, the skin already healed around it.
Not only had the bone needed to be rebroken so it could be set properly, but the doctors had needed to surgically open Steve’s arm. Except the serum caused him to heal quickly, never mind that damage was difficult to affect to start with. And Tony knew that neither anesthetics nor pain medication worked on Steve due to his high metabolism. Three hours of absolute hell for both Steve and the doctors. His arm had healed before they ever left SHIELD, but the horror hadn’t dimmed down for days afterward. It resulted in the Avengers all learning how to set a broken bone in case it ever happened again. It was possible they wouldn’t have time to assist in the midst of a battle, but if they could, it would save a lot of agony for Steve later on.
Sometimes the injuries sustained in battle required nothing more than a wrap and pain medication, particularly when they involved ribs, and all of them (save Hulk) had ended up with cracked ribs at one point or another.
Due to the presence of the arc reactor, Tony having injuries to his ribs was something best avoided, and something he didn’t care to think about. Of the two times Clint had been so injured, though, he spent one in SHIELD medical for also sustaining a sprain to his left wrist. The second time, he came back to the tower with them, doped up on pain medication.
Tony had never seen anyone, even Rhodey, react so hilariously to pain meds.
“Say it!”
“Clint, get down from there now,” Steve ordered, staring up at where Clint was somehow clinging to the wall in the far corner of the room. His pupils were blown wide from the pain medication SHEILD had given him and Steve was only glad they had finally managed to contain him to one room.
“Say it,” Clint demanded petulantly.
Steve sighed. “Legolas. What do your elven eyes see?”
Clint let out a cackle loud enough to make Steve wince. He was distracted as Tony came into the room, a cup of coffee in one hand and an exasperated look on his face. “Is he still up there? Who do you think you are? Nightcrawler?”
Clint cheerfully ignored Tony’s words in favor of shouting “Gimli! You are still the shortest and grumpiest dwarf I have ever befriended.”
There was a wheezing noise from the kitchen that choked off into a cough and Tony glanced back at the open doorway to see Bruce had a hand clamped over his mouth. “Don’t you dare.”
“And your beard is magnificent!” Clint yelled from his spot in the ceiling. “Very befitting of a dwarf!” His eyes widened. “You should grow it long so we can braid it.”
“No,” Tony said, even as Clint continued, “And it should be red, Gimli.”
“Clint. I will throw you off the tower and see if you can fly.”
Clint sniffed. “Nobody tosses an elf.”
Tony liked to remember the funny moments.
He liked remembering the good times, with these people who were swiftly becoming friends, because sometimes… sometimes being heroes wasn’t enough. Oh, they’d beat the villain eventually - drive mutant gorillas back into their cages, send alien invaders packing, have bank robbers begging the cops to arrest them. They could beat the bad guys, sure, yeah.
But the truth was in their name. Being Avengers meant avenging those who had been hurt, because sometimes, being a superhero wasn’t enough. Being Iron Man wasn’t enough to save everyone.
Compared to aliens and giant mutated monstrosities, regular old thieves seemed a threat better dealt with by the NYPD. But even regular old vandals could become the sort of monsters that haunted a person’s nightmares.
Tony wished it hadn’t taken such a terrible incident to remind him of that.
“Remind me again why we’re playing security detail for Hammer?” Tony said as he zipped around the exterior of the building. “I feel like this is a conflict of interest on my part.”
“You’re here as Iron Man,” Steve said over the comm, “not as Tony Stark.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Clearly you missed the press conference where I revealed that I am Iron Man. It was televised. I can look it up on youtube for you later if you’re still having trouble navigating the internet.”
“I’m not having trouble with the internet, Tony.” Steve’s voice sounded exasperated, a surefire sign that he was as frustrated with this mission as Tony was. They all were.
They had been wasting their time at HammerTech Industries for three days now. Justin had apparently received numerous threats about someone wanting a project he was working on. He hadn’t given in to their demands, which had impressed Tony a little since he knew how much of a weasel Justin was. And a coward.
No, Tony wasn’t here because Justin’s designs or prototypes or whatever this super-secret project he was working on was in danger, and he certainly wasn’t here because Fury had asked it of him - there wasn’t a thing that wannabe pirate could say that could get Tony to dance when he didn’t feel like it. No. Tony was here because Justin Hammer had called him personally to ask for Iron Man’s help, and really, who was Tony to deny a fellow inventor his much-sought-after assistance?
And if he’d had Jarvis record that phone conversation for much listening in the future, well, after what Justin had tried to do to him, he was allowed to be petty.
He heard Clint sigh over the channel. Clint had a very recognizable sigh. It was always filled to the brim with boredom. “What exactly are we expecting to happen here?” Tony could imagine the archer crouched, idly fiddling with an arrow, bow resting on his knees as he spoke into the comm. “I mean, if they’re scoping the place out, your shiny metal ass zipping around the building is going to tell them we’re here and waiting.”
“You don’t think it’s too subtle?” Tony asked, doing a barrel-roll as he swooped in front of the window where Clint was sitting. “I could totally write my name above the building if you think we need to be more obvious.”
“You would have sky-writing smoke in your suit, Stark,” Natasha said, and there was clear amusement in her voice.
“Of course I would,” Tony said, his grin wide. Of course he would have sky-writing smoke in his suit. Because he was a narcissist, right, Natasha? But he wouldn’t say that, couldn’t say that. She hadn’t hinted that she still thought that and no one brought it up. It was just him thinking too much again. Thinking that maybe, maybe they were just waiting for him to prove that her report had been right. That yes, Iron Man would make a great Avenger, but not Tony Stark.
“I could write Avengers are here in blue smoke, if you think that’ll get this shitheads to just get this over--”
The explosion cut off his words and sent him flying. Jarvis’ rushed explanation of heat and explosive power and damage radius bombarding him along with the wailing of alarms until he crashed into a building and straight into blackness.