If Kate Bishop were to guess which Avenger she would eventually be attached to she would have assumed Hawkeye for what she considered obvious reasons. She shot arrows, Hawkeye shot arrows, and they could both do cool fancy tricks though she was enthused to learn the real Hawkeye couldn’t shoot arrows with his toes like she could. Hell, even if she had to pick a second Avenger she’d be attached to it’d be Black Widow because people liked to group women together on principal. Instead she gets attached to Iron Man of all people and as his kid. Sure she was following his children scandal like everyone else was but she hardly expected that she’d end up involved in it, especially not as some rando’s sister.
But hey, here she was sitting across from her fake dad with her fake brother and they’re filling her in on all the details of her life story, her fake life story, and she’s enthusiastically eating it up. Come on, how many chances did a person get in their life to fuck with an entire country of people? She’d be a fool to turn it all down and the deal gets sweeter when she learns that Wakanda was in on it all too even if they had no desire to be.
“So this is all some fake shit you guys invented out of a rumor that Peter Parker was your kid?” she asks just to make sure she got this all right.
They nod and she laughs, “oh man, I have to admire your world building here. I mean you’ve even made all the timelines match up and gave us all fake mothers,” she says. Tony has come in contact with a lot of women and that long list wasn’t exclusively lovers though that would be a hell of a list too. He didn’t exactly have slim pickings when it came to pulling some obscure woman’s name from his past and attaching it to his new kid. Kate’s supposed mom was a model he slept with in the late eighties who was loving the new publicity and for that reason hasn’t denied any rumors of having children with Tony Stark. Hell, Kate wouldn’t deny having Tony’s babies either. He’s a genius, successful, a hero, and he’s hot- what’s not to love?
“True. Riri’s mom is annoyed but it at least keeps the press off her ass,” Harley says, shaking his head.
“Wait- she’s the one that reverse engineered the Iron Man suit, right? Wouldn’t her parent’s names be in papers mentioning her success?” she asks. Well, she guessed it was fun to think they could screw with the media while it lasted.
Tony snorts, “child’s play, kid. Obviously Riri was born in the height of my party days and I was by no means fit to raise a child so her fake mother and I agreed to give her up to a lovely family outside of New York and I didn’t come back into her life until she was older and I was more stable. Problem solved,” Tony says, looking pleased with himself.
Kate bounces excitedly in her seat, “I am so excited to fuck with the media! Does this mean I get to meet Black Panther because T’Challa is my hero.” Ever since that time he decided he was going to kick the Winter Soldier’s ass up and down every street he found him on she decided that Black Panther was the hero for her.
“Yeah, and he is way more attractive in person,” Harley says and Tony makes a face at him.
“Don’t talk about your fake step father that way, it’s creepy.”
Harley shrugs, “I can’t help it if it’s true.”
*
T’Challa has decided if he had to put up with Tony and this children catfishing the media he was going to make them put up with his love of horror movies. Not a single one of them liked the films and unlike American horror Wakandan horror was actually scary.
“American horror is terrifying, how can Wakandan horror be more terrifying?” Peter asks skeptically.
“American horror is all Christian demons, which is not only boring and predictable but it is not at all scary to a person who does not believe in Christian demons. And if it is not Christian demons than it is all gore and shock value. Or zombies, ghosts, things that do not look human, or some other culture’s traditions mangled into a storyline that desecrates the original culture’s story. Boring. Wakandan horror is scary because it relies on realistic human fears to frighten the audience,” he says in a haughty tone.
Rhodey shakes his head, “why does it have to have black people in it though? American media is mostly white and in the case of horror I will gladly support the inequality of black representation because then Christian demons only haunt the white folks and I’m perfectly alright with that,” he says, shuddering.
T’Challa frowns, “I am fairly certain a movie starring a black man in a horror film just came out recently,” he says. Unless that trailer was misleading, which he has learned they sometimes are.
“Get Out was different, it was making a point about racism and stuff and… well actually it’s scary because that sort of stuff happens. Minus the brain bit,” he says.
“See? And it was good because it plays on real fears,” T’Challa says, “so America does know how to do horror. Well, settle in because I read another story about Riri being my child and my country is really starting to wonder if I may have an illegitimate child and this is my revenge.”
Two hours later Peter has sprayed webs all over the place, Kate had reached for the arrows she usually held on her back five times, Tony flailed so hard he punched poor Rhodey in the face, and Rhodey jumped so hard his left leg moved on its own.
“I’m so scared but I kind of want more,” Harley says, half hiding behind the blanket he went and stole from Riri’s room earlier. Riri currently had it over her head.
“Speak for yourself, Keener, I almost wet myself!” Peter says.
“I have sleep issues already but after I had to witness this movie with my own two eyes I’m never sleeping again,” Tony says, staring at the screen with wide eyes.
“You all know you could have just left, right?” he asks. Every single person in the room glares at him and he laughs, enthused with their lack of forethought.
*
“Children,” T’Challa says, drawing the attention of all four children and Tony, who for some reason responded. “What is a ‘shitpost’?” he asks.
Tony immediately looks excited and jumps into the discussion of how to explain a ‘shitpost’ to him and he leans back and lets them do it. “Okay but what shitpost do we show him to demonstrate our point?” Riri asks. This gives them all pause until Peter brightens and leans forward.
“Trashcats!” he says and T’Challa frowns, hoping that there were no actual cats in the trash. That was just cruel to the animals and America already had a bizarre fondness for dogs. Everyone had them and they kept trying to sniff him. He understood that the dogs were just being dogs but he did not have to like it.
“Good choice!” Riri says, grinning.
“Trashcats?” Tony asks, frowning. Finally a meme he did not understand. Now he knew how it felt to be T’Challa when the children started speaking and he got lost once they started referencing content from the internet that they all ran into when he did not.
“You’ve never seen it? Well you’re in for a treat,” Kate says and starts tapping at her screen. “Come here T’Challa,” she says and he complies, walking over mostly because he missed his cats and cats on a screen were just as cute as his lovely Wakandan breeds back home.
Instead what he gets is the most pointless, ridiculous video he has ever seen in his life and to make matters worse Tony starts laughing so hard he stops breathing. The video was not at all amusing to him. “Those are not cats,” he says bluntly, unimpressed with American humor.
“Okay so lets break down the essence of this shitpost,” Harley says, “and we’ll start with the fact that those are not cats, they are possums. Which is the point, it adds to the humor,” Harley explains.
“Plus we’ve got the shitty text overlay, which kind of resembles the MTV text overlays back when MTV still played music. Very ‘graphic design is my passion’,” Peter says, waving his arms around. This, T’Challa knew was a meme with a badly pasted frog over some random background with ‘graphic design is my passion’ written in papyrus font. He had asked about that after the children spent a good twenty minutes referencing the meme when they spotted a badly put together billboard advertising iced tea. The beverage, in T’Challa’s opinion, was absolutely disgusting. Why Peter had a fondness for it he will never know.
“Oh, and don’t forget the bad English sentence structure,” Riri throws in.
“And the purposeful shortening of ‘banana’ to ‘nana’,” Kate says.
“That was hilarious,” Tony finally wheezes out, still mostly laughing.
“We’re going to play it again for you so you can see a shitpost in action,” Riri says and they replay the video. They all burst out laughing and Tony, who was half leaning on the island in the kitchen, slips off to the ground laughing so hard he is no longer making noise.
“What the fuck?” he asks them, unable to see the amusement in the video. They only laugh harder because his swearing was surprising and unexpected given that he never swore.
*
Kate, Tony learns, works marvelously in the field with the rest of the kids minus Harley, whom Tony was teaching to direct their actions from his lab. He didn’t want the kid to feel left out and teaching him how to deal with villains in a safe way instead of trying to track down that radioactive spider that bit Peter to give him his powers was probably for the best. Aside from keeping Harley safe and included it also ensured that the children had someone else to rely on if, for some reason, Tony was unable to help them out from behind the scenes. The hardest part of the interactions was teaching Harley how to anticipate Steve’s orders the way Tony did, which was frustrating him.
“You do just fine,” Harley mumbles as Peter and Riri manage to corner the latest Villain of the Week.
“Yeah, and I also worked with the guy for like seven years doing this sort of thing. Of course I’m going to be better at it than you are given that alone. Now shush and watch,” he says and he goes back to directing Riri in particular given that the suit was now a good combination of both of their efforts but she was still somewhat unfamiliar with the bits that were more his than hers. Steve, he knows, has noticed that the suit is smaller than it was but Tony has so far staved him off by pretending that he made the weapons on it smaller and more efficient. Riri was actually taller than him, but she was far slimmer and that made the suits proportions totally different and it was only a matter of time before Steve or someone else figured out it wasn’t him in the suit.
In the meantime he took the heat for Riri’s mistakes as Iron Man while she was learning, made excuses to Steve and the public, and made sure the target was on his back instead of hers. And, because Sam and Bucky were lovely human beings, they mostly distracted the Avengers with their own mission to out prank the other in increasingly convoluted ways. This week Sam covered Bucky’s metal arm in post-it notes except he super glued them on so Bucky couldn’t get them off and Sam, in turn, has colorful tinfoil wings that he has proudly told everyone were his way of showing everyone he’s a gay superhero.
Bucky’s reaction was amusing even if Tony still mostly wanted the guy dead. And he got the added benefit of watching Steve tell some reporter that he had no problem with Sam’s being gay or his support of the LGBT+ community. Bonus points for when he told the entire world that if he cared he’d be more than a hypocrite because he and Sam were dating, which even Tony didn’t know until that moment. The world went wild, Sam let his gay wings fly, and poor Bucky’s prank fell flat and he still had a bunch of ridiculous post-its on his arm.
Harley watches as he directs things around Steve’s orders until the villain is caught and presumably tossed in jail and then they wait for everyone to come home. “So does this mean I get stuck watching more Avengers videos while I try to predict Steve’s orders?” Harley grumbles.
“Probably, yeah. But you’re improving you know,” Tony tells him.
This perks him up, “really?”
“Yeah really,” Tony says, leaving out the bit where he was still terrible at it. That wouldn’t do anything to help him and he genuinely has made a lot of improvements since they first started this.
Harley seems less upset by his own incompetence by the time everyone gets home looking tired and a little roughed up. Peter sheds his suit pretty much as soon as he gets in the door, Kate collapses on the couch, and Riri uses Tony’s old method of removing the suit by walking down the runway.
“I have to admit that is cool as hell,” she says as she steps out of her boot and into the house.
“That was the point. And also it prevents the suit from being damaged,” he says. But mostly it looked cool.
T’Challa heads off to the kitchen and removes his helmet, setting it on the island while he picks up a banana to eat. Tony looks around to see if anyone was going to take the moment but no one does. He waits until T’Challa is chewing before he stage whispers, “trashcat eats nana.”
It takes a moment but everyone looks over and Peter singsongs, “hungry,” adding to Tony’s joke and they all start laughing except T’Challa, who looks annoyed.
“Someone should overlay the text and song from that video over T’Challa eating a banana,” Kate suggests.
“Will do,” FRIDAY responds, finally settling into the role JARVIS used to play. It’s taken time but for a teenage AI she’s doing well. She took this cue like JARVIS would have and Tony was excited about it.
“This better not become a meme,” T’Challa mumbles, glaring at his banana.
*
T’Challa loved Tony, he did, but his damn AI placing that song and text over him eating a banana blew up in America within minutes. What he doesn’t expect is for Wakanda to pick it up and when he returns to his home country he finds posters of the Black Panther with bananas on them everywhere. Even Okoye thought it was amusing and Okoye was not someone who laughed easily.
“Trashcat eats nana, that is amusing. And here I thought the Americans were humorless,” she says, laughing harder as the video of him eating that damn banana replays.
“Way to go big brother, you have finally broken the ice between Wakanda and the rest of the world by having an American meme catch on here,” Shuri says, grinning at him. She knew he hated the meme but she also knew that his annoyance with the shitpost was not going to be made public because Wakanda disliked all things that were not Wakandan still. They only liked the meme because it was him in it, but it was a start for integrating them into the rest of the world so trashcat eat nana it was whether he liked it or not.