Fic: There is no 'I'... 10/11
Chapter 10
Two weeks and a megalomaniac in Indonesia later, Tony still hadn’t decided if he would stay with the Avengers. Romonoff must have had a conversation with Coulson because she and Tony had removed several terrorist cells through the Middle East with no argument whatsoever from her superiors. He figured it was a concession to Tony’s mood after he almost indirectly destroyed the UN, but he wasn’t going to bother to ask. He’d built Iron Man to fix the mistakes he’d made with Stark Industries, the Avengers were all about threats that none of them could handle alone.
They could manage just fine without him. Particularly if Fury could get Rhodey on board as a full time member. Then they’d have Iron Man’s flight and defenses with about ten times the damage per second.
Only thing was, Tony really loved being one of the good guys.
Back in the New York mansion after a couple of days in LA doing business, Tony was joined by Thor on the garden stairs while he watched Hawkeye’s target practice and inhaled some coffee. After forty-five shots the man hadn’t missed one bull’s eye.
“You’d think he’d get bored.” Tony observed as Thor leaned his back against an ornamental urn, long legs sprawling down the wide marble stairs.
“It is only through repetition and practice that a warrior can maintain the highest level of his skills.” Thor pronounced with a hint of sanction in his tone.
Tony shot him an amused glance. “I thought you Viking gods were all about the feasting and the mead?”
“Only after the battle is won,” but there was matching humor in the god’s voice now. “Then we are all about the mead.”
“I knew you weren’t as holier than thou as you pretend to be Big Man. We should try some of my mead in the cellar sometime?” Tony asked as Clint’s arrows obliterated another target.
“Perhaps when next we have emerged victorious from a conflict, we shall celebrate as a team?” Thor didn’t take his eyes off Clint as the archer received a call on the communication bud in his ear.
Tony couldn’t ever be described as naïve in any way. “Yeah, sure. As a team,” he agreed.
“There’s an army of giants ants raiding people’s picnics in Central Park.” Clint told them as he walked over, running quick fingers over the arrows in his quiver.
Tony blinked. “Let me guess, they’re not running away with sandwiches?”
“No.” Clint’s smile was grim.
*****
“You know,” Tony spoke while using repulsors to kill the larger warrior ants. “I’ve read a paper by this guy who thinks he can identify the level of sound ants talk to each other on.” Another insect with a toughened exoskeleton went flying. “I thought he was on crack.”
Cap’s shield whirled under Tony’s feet. “That would be helpful right now, don’t you think?” The Avenger’s ear bud communications were sketchy at best with the magic auras all over the place.
“Hearing what the ants are saying? Um…unless they’re telling each other where the secret location of their queen is, then no.” Tony was starting the get a rhythm going with the repulsors. Kind of like old school space invaders, but without the retro-techno music score.
“Ugh.” Cap’s grunt of pain had Tony turning in time to see an ant catapulted across the park to fell several of its comrades. “They’re flanking us.” Cap reported, taking up a back-to-back position with Hawkeye.
“Cheeky little fuckers.” Tony blasted three away from Widow and tried to use his boot repulsors to drive others off two huddled civilians.
“Thor?” Cap asked the blond Viking out in the center of the insectoid army. Thor was swinging Mjolnir like a baseball bat and having way too much fun in Tony’s opinion.
“I cannot bring down a storm here Captain.” More ants became bowling balls of doom to their own kind. “There are too many bystanders still in the battle zone that may be harmed.”
“Sir…” Tony’s AI began.
“Great minds Jarvis. Cap? We don’t need lightening; these ants are acting just like animals without higher intelligence. So…” Tony was momentarily interrupted by the impact of an ant bringing him to the ground. Oh shit. He’d forgotten that some ants have wings.
“Iron Man? Status?” Cap grunted through another man vs. insect wrestling match.
“Fine. Get off my face, Adam.” Tony blasted it halfway back to the mansion. He got to his feet. “As I was saying…”
“Who’s Adam?” Cap actually spoke that to Tony’s faceplate, a slight pause in the ant’s momentum giving them a minute to regroup.
Tony grinned. “Be glad you missed the eighties, Cap.”
“I liked Duran Duran,” Black Widow offered with a wry smile, adrenalin rendering her flushed and gorgeous.
“You’re Russian. Your musical taste doesn’t count.” Tony teased.
Cap took a quick surveying look at his team, except for Thor, whose joy in battle had resulted in singing and thus the temporary paralysis of the ant horde.
“Thor makes it rain,” Tony offered his plan. “No lightening, just big fat raindrops, they’re ants…”
“They’ll retreat underground during a rainstorm.” Cap finished the thought setting off in Thor’s direction.
“Unless they’re mind controlled by the sorcerer.” Clint countered pessimistically. “Then we have to fight them in the rain.”
Tony rolled his eyes behind the faceplate. “Better idea, Hawkeye. Let’s hear it?” Rising into the air, he had JARVIS run a scan to identify the possible entries to the ant lair.
Hawkeye renewed his insect target practice. “Get the people clear so the lightening can fry the lot of them.”
Tony gave that a seconds thought. “Fair enough.”
“Do both.” The Captain ordered, currently keeping a circle clear around Thor while the Norse God summoned the rain. “Help the civilians, but be ready to follow if the ants retreat.”
“Yessir.” Iron Man pinpointed the non-combatants and made for the ones farthest from the Avengers.
*****
“Admitting I was right isn’t going to make you less of a man Hawkeye.” Tony told the purple leather back as they trudged down tunnels that didn’t exist beneath the park.
The archer barely paused in his determined pursuit of their foe. “You had no idea if they were controlled or not, you just guessed.”
Tony shrugged inside the armor. “My guess was right.”
“Cut the chatter fellas, we’re there.” Cap moved silently back from a ledge just ahead of them. Tony was bringing up the rear of the group because Iron Man was many things, but quiet wasn’t one of them.
Looking out into the huge natural cavern, Tony didn’t need to switch to infra-red as he’d expected. The ant queen was lying on a mound of sand bathed in the light of thirteen halogen lamps. Three human women sat around her, each holding a large earthen bowl in their laps. Even from a distance, Tony could detect the blood staining the women’s mouths, clothes and pooling in the sand beneath them.
“I hate magic.” Tony whispered.
“I concur, Sir.” JARVIS agreed with a verbal shudder.
“Send them back! Now!” Tony’s external microphones picked up the harsh, exhausted voice. He reached forward to tap Cap on the shoulder, but was forestalled by the man’s sudden tension.
A grey-faced teenage boy in skinny jeans was pushed to his knees in front of the enormous ant queen. The woman who’d spoken lifted a red-stained machete.
“Oh, to the hells no.” Clint swore viciously.
“Iron Man.” Captain America leaned back in a perfect discus lunge.
“I’ve got him.” Tony said as he shot over their heads and down into the cavern.
It was a race between Cap’s shield and Iron Man, but Tony gave his stomach over to mach 2 and pushed his shoulder under the machete strike just in the nick of time. The youth was screaming in terror as Tony lifted him away from the Grand High Murdering Psychobitch, but he clung to Tony’s shoulders with desperate, grateful hands.
Back at the exit, Tony set the kid down and took note of the shield back in Captain America’s grasp, several witches with arrows in their wrists and ankles and a spider among the ants.
Oh and Thor was singing again.
“Thank you, thank you man. Jesus fuck, fuck.” The teenager scrubbed his hands over his face and looked to Iron Man with crazed eyes. “They were killing everyone, one by one, just taking us. Fuck! They killed the driver, cut bits off him and fed them to that queen thing. Jesus.”
Tony agreed with the sentiment, but he didn’t have time to give the boy comfort. Thor was hammering the queen, but the coven were regrouping and starting to overwhelm Clint and Natasha with the ant colony.
“Central Park is that way. Find the cops or guys that look like Special Forces, tell them we’re down here.” Tony didn’t wait to see if the guy complied, he only just managed to kill the ant on Hawkeye’s back before it took a bite out of his shoulder.
Long bloody minutes passed as the Avengers waded through the shifting morass of insects. Iron Man played bait for the witches, taking their weird magical force bolts on his armor and retaliating in spades with repulsor blasts. Thor had churned up a sand storm around the queen, high insect shrieks coming from within. Occupied with the coven Tony couldn’t protect his team-mates, he had to rely on the trio to cover each other’s backs while he and Thor tried to break the battle wide open.
“The colony should flee in fear or simply fall into disarray if the queen dies.” JARVIS offered.
“That is the plan.” Tony gritted out, ignoring red lights on the HUD, listening desperately to Widow and Hawkeye yelling moves to each other over the here-again, gone-again comms.
Wham! Iron Man went into an uncontrolled back-spin for four long seconds, before he could right himself. Shaking off the vertigo Tony focused on the battle only to be swamped again by the combined magical rage of three very power witches.
“Systems at criti…”
“I know.” Tony growled, switching over to the Avengers’ comm-line. “Thor, Cap fall back I’m going to…”
“Iron Man, you fall back! Thor, distract her, I’m coming in from the south side.” Steve sounded breathless, but calm in the face of countless enemies. Tony dodged another volley, taking a quick scan of the sand mound. Cap’s plan was good. The queen, near incoherent with rage and pain was pursuing the blond giant with the electricity that stung and smoked along her carapace.
Captain America was moving with that uncanny co-ordination through the chaotic churn of the ant colony, stealing closer out of the queen’s sight. One perfect strike from the honed edge of the red, white and blue shield would take her out and end the battle.
But it wouldn’t happen if Tony retreated. There were three witches at least out there; one of them would see Steve. He was better than good, he could likely duck the magical missiles that peppered Tony, all Cap needed was one good throw.
Then he would be defenseless until his shield spun back.
Tony flew a strafing pass over the witches' heads. They turned to follow him, blue death flying from their hands.
Thor dropped to one knee, Mjolnir readied as if for another strike.
“System failure in three….two…
Cap beheaded the queen in one neat strike.
A great sigh concertinaed through the colony and then the ants began to flee.
From the small crater he’d made on the ground, Tony blinked up at the ceiling and was momentarily pleased he’d worn pants underneath the armor today. The ants were running over him, hundreds of legs skidding off his skin, knocking into his shoulders as he curled up to protect his head and chest, instinct and Steve’s training coming into play.
Long minutes later the scrambling horde was gone and Tony dropped his arms to a great view of Hawkeye’s ass. The archer was standing over him, deflecting the last of the petrified creatures with carefully placed arrows.
“Thanks,” Tony got to his feet unsteadily, trying to assess if he could draw out the armor without spraining his spine.
“That was a great plan there Tony, suicide dive for the win yeah?” Clint snarked as he took in the bloody scratches along Tony’s arms and back.
“Bite me,” Iron Man smiled as the helmet fitted neatly into place. Thor was subduing the still screaming cult leaders. “Where’s Widow?”
“Can’t see her.” Worry threaded through the normally cocky tone of Hawkeye’s voice.
Tony grabbed an armful of archer and lifted into the air, quickly spotting the fallen black-clad figure and Captain America steadily performing first aid.
“Natasha!” The cry was simultaneous. Then Clint was easily dropping to the ground, moving to help while Tony rocketed up the tunnel to find medical aid.
He found it in the form of Agent Coulson, a SHEILD team and several paramedics tentatively moving down the tunnel.