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Education and Collars, a further continuation

Jan2

A Change in Routine
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Let’s Pretend
Class is in Session
A Brief Reunion
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Unexpected Visitor
Lessons in the Dojo
[personal profile] inventrix‘s from RP logs

Dinner with Leo had been… Interesting. Educational, Luke decided, like every visit to the Ran- to Boom’s place. Wherever Boom’s places were.

For one thing, it had taught him that he needed to visit Howard, or maybe talk Shira into doing so.

For another, it had taught him he owed Apollo an apology. So, sitting in Cynara’s living room while Cynara and Leo made small talk about their students, he looked Apollo in the eye. “I shouldn’t have split your crew up. I’m sorry.”

There was a pause while Apollo processed that. Then, “Yeah. No biggie, I guess.” Apollo tugged on his collar and looked away.

Luke coughed. That. “I’m not going to apologize for asking jae’Red Doomsday to Keep you.”

Apollo glanced at him sideways. “Why not?”

“Because you needed it. Because being here is good for you.” He could see Apollo readying a scoff. He kept talking. “I failed you as a Mentor. But I’ve seen what Cyna- Cya can do as a Keeper.”

“Yeah? Have you seen her collar collection?”

Luke snorted. “I’ve watched her pick her Kept for the last sixty years. If I were Regine I could tell you their survival percentages…”

“Please don’t,” Cynara murmured. When Luke glanced over, she was once again chatting to Leo about something one of their Students had done.

“…I can’t. I’m not that good at numbers. But I’d bet you anything it’s higher than that of the rest of the Addergoole grads.”

“Anything?” Apollo leaned forward, a fierce twist of an expression on his face. “Would you bet a year under this collar yourself?”

Cynara and Leo stopped talking. For a moment, it seemed to Luke that the entire city stopped talking.

It was a fair question. He glanced over at Cynara, only to see that she was studiously watching a patch of wall over Leofric’s shoulder.

“Well,” he started to hedge, “there’s the problem of my teaching job…” No. He needed to give the kid a fair answer. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d be willing to gamble that.” Mike would kill him. Slowly. But it wasn’t like there was much danger of it. “But are you sure jae’Doomsday is interested in being gambled with?”

Apollo glanced guiltily back at his Keeper. “Um. Well. She Keeps someone every year. You said it.”

“All students just out of Addergoole, all of them. Hell,” he added with some frustration, “there was a good chance she would have picked you up without my intervention.” The boy certainly had the look, and that was something Luke wasn’t going to say out loud in front of any of the three of them. “I’m not exactly her type.”

“She doesn’t need a ‘type’,” Apollo retorted with some frustration. “She has Leo and Howard.”

Oh. Well. Luke coughed. “Anyway. Yes. I’d be willing to gamble on that if jae’Doomsday would be willing to be gambled with.”

And the dead gods help him if he was wrong.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1038122.html. You can comment here or there.

Lessons in the Dojo, a continuation of a continuation

Dec31

A Change in Routine
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Let’s Pretend
Class is in Session
A Brief Reunion
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Unexpected Visitor

Luke had been curious who this Nanaya was that could get Apollo training against haybales. As it turned out, she was an Amazonian strawberry-blonde woman with an easy smile and a mischievous lift to her eyebrow. Watching her run through kata with the other students, Luke was willing to bet she was deadly in a fight.

He noted, too, that although most of Leo’s students managed to hide their surprise when he called Leo jae’ – as was right, he reminded himself; he still had a couple centuries on Lightning Blade – Nanaya just smiled more broadly. She’d be an interesting one to hunt alongside.

That was a thought for another day, and probably for some other world. He was here to see Apollo and Leo, and he was talking to Leo.

“I’ll be starting class in a few minutes; would you like to stay and watch?” Leo had grown up somewhere along the way. Luke had seen it the last few times he visited Cloverleaf, and yet he still found himself surprised by it every time.

“I’d love to.” Luke smiled. “I hear you’ve got some interesting tricks here.”

“Oh, well-“

“They’re sneaky,” Apollo interrupted, half in awe and half in complaint. “You think they’re coming up to your left and then all of a sudden, boom.”

Luke chuckled ruefully. “Sounds like a hunt, doesn’t it?” He raised his eyebrows at Leo. “It doesn’t usually work well with my Students, but I remember when you were training with Ciara.” His expression slipped. He wanted to be proud of her, he really did, but…

…another day, another world. “It’s a good thing to learn.” He pulled the conversation back to the dojo. “The Nedetakai and the monsters don’t usually fight fair, do they?” He was talking to Leo, but his words were still aimed at Apollo.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1036114.html. You can comment here or there.

A Brief Reunion, a story bit of Doomsday

Dec31

A Change in Routine
[personal profile] inventrix‘s Let’s Pretend
Class is in Session

Regine had sent Luke for the kid because he was in a bad neighborhood, as far as their data could discern, he was a descendant of Aelfgar, and he was male.

It made as much sense as most of her decisions, so Luke had armed up, tapped their current staff teleporter, and headed into the wasteland that had once been St. Paul.

It had been surprisingly easy to find the kid; Luke had followed the shouting and found a scrawny, filthy, sunburnt kid holding a stick in each hand and fending off three grown men. Not from himself, Luke quickly noticed; the kid was protecting three smaller children who were, it seemed, roasting a pigeon over a small fire.

“Hey!” Luke had absolutely no problem getting everyone’s attention. “Let’s even this fight up!” He noticed the moment where the kid thought he was going to attack him, and the way the boy’s stance, untrained as it was, shifted.

Me or Shou, he decided, although they were supposed to let the kids choose their own mentors. This one would need training if he was going to survive more fights like this.

When the boy – who everyone called Pony – refused to leave until Luke promised not only to find a safe place for the kids he was protecting, but also to help Pony find his mother and the kids’ mothers, if they were still alive, Luke amended the decision to mine. The kid had Mara instincts. They were going to need a lot of honing.

Maybe he should have let the kid go with Shou.

Luke had been chewing that thought over for well over a year now; by the end of Apollo’s third year, it’d been clear that there were some holes in his education that he had no interest in filling. By the end of his fourth year, Luke had on his hands an Adult – but an Adult it would be a crime to send out into the world.

Cy’Luca had taught Apollo how to fight – but every heroic, stupid, suicidal impulse had just been reinforced by the cy’ree and, unfortunately, by Luke himself. The kid was too full of himself, and any lectures otherwise came out as hypocrisy and worse.

So Luke had asked Cya Red Doomsday to clean up his mess.

It had been a few months, and the guilt was beginning to eat at him. So Luke visited Cloverleaf – walking in, like a normal person – and asked around until he found Red Doomsday’s Latest Kept.

He found him in the pasture, sparring with a haybale. Luke watched for a minute or two, noting that the kid’s technique had improved, that the frown of concentration was the same, that he was putting on color and keeping his muscle tone, and that his tempero huamu was definitely getting better. The haybale moved almost like a person.

“Keep your guard up, you’re leaving your left open,” he barked, both because he couldn’t help himself and because he wanted to let Apollo know he was there.

Apollo nodded, lifted up his off-hand dagger-stick, and lunged into a tricky stab-and-roll that Luke definitely hadn’t taught him. When he came up to his feet again, the haybale settled into an unmoving pile.

“Nanaya keeps doing this thing with her off-hand weapon. It’s tricky, and I haven’t quite figured it out yet.” He pushed his hair out of his face and settled into a more still position. “Sa’Hunting Hawk.”

There was a quietness to his body language that Luke certainly hadn’t managed to teach him. “jae’Sun-fire.” He nodded politely. “Nanaya?”

“She’s cy’Inazuma, one of his best students. I’m still figuring out how to beat her.” Apollo shifted hie weight from his front foot to his back. “Why are you here, sir?”

Luke sighed. “I wanted to check up on you. See how you were doing.”

Apollo tugged on the collar around his neck. “Still Kept.”

“She has only once in her entire history Kept someone for more than a year, and she’s never Kept anyone for less than a year.”

“There’s always another chance to be an anomaly, then.” Apollo smirked. “She might get sick of me, or she might decide I’m hopeless.”

“Last time, the world was ending.” Luke allowed himself a grim smile. “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.”

“We found Olindo.” The change in topic came with a shift in posture. He sheathed his wooden practice weapons.

Luke fought down the instinct to move into a combative position and stayed casual, wings folded, hands loose. “Yeah?” The kid’s crewmate had been less than happy with Luke over Apollo’s Keeping.

“You shouldn’t have split us up.” Apollo twisted his lips in something almost like a smile. “We’re too stupid on our own.”

Nanaya cy’Inazume
BASICS
The character is female.
6 ft. 3 in. tall
slim build
cropped short perfectly straight strawberry blonde hair
blue-grey eyes
light skin
Their eyes is notable in some way.

CHANGE
They have a large feline Change.
Significant physical Changes include: eye color
Their innate ability allows them to attract weather in some way.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1035741.html. You can comment here or there.

Class is in Session, a story of Cya/Doomsday

Dec29

after [personal profile] inventrix‘s Let’s Pretend, which is after my A Change in Routine.

When Leo walked into Cya’s front yard carrying her Kept over his shoulder, she found that she wasn’t surprised, and that she was more than a little relieved.

It wouldn’t be enough, of course. Apollo was the most stubborn, ridiculous, arrogant man she had had the misfortune to deal with…

…since Leo and Howard were that age, a thought she was doing her best to suppress, especially considering how Leo’s fierce smile vanished when he caught her looking at him.

He set her Kept down on her porch as Cya opened her door and deftly avoided the angry punch Apollo attempted to throw.

“I see you’ve met Professor Inazuma. Come in.” She made it an invitation for Leo and an order for Apollo. “Leo, I see you’ve met my new Kept. I hope he wasn’t too difficult.”

“He wasn’t difficult at all!” Leo was having fun, a smile flashing onto his face before he remembered he was supposed to be feeling bad. “Ah, we got in a bit of a fight…”

“You kicked his ass, you mean.” She watched Apollo’s face; she didn’t need to watch Leo’s to know what was going across it. He’d be hang-dog for a moment, and then proud of himself again.

Apollo was warring with something simpler: pride and fear. He’d noticed, then, how much stronger, how much more skilled than him Leo was. Good. “Are you just going to let him manhandle your Kept like that?” He spat out the word Kept. He always did. But the end of the sentence was more like a plea. “Or–“

“We were playing a bit of Let’s Pretend.” The pride was clear in Leo’s voice, and the anger and fear were sparking in Apollo’s face again.

“You were playing! I was–“

“You were saying you could handle yourself.” She could hear the sharp smile in Leo’s voice. “If I’d been a slaver, you’d be in chains by now.”

It was hardly a fair challenge. They had great-grandchildren older than this boy.

Slavers wouldn’t be fair, either.

“Leo was cy’Luca, too, Apollo, back when we were kids. A lot of kids have been, through the years, if you do the math.” She kept her eyes on him. “One or two in every Cohort… One or two cy’Fridmar, too, and they’re just as vicious in a fight, more likely to cheat, and more likely to turn evil. Never mind the cy’Sakamoto; nobody knows which way they’ll go. And most of the cy’Doug would rather kill you than look at you.”

“I get it!” He flung his arms upward violently. “Yeah, sure, there’s lots of assholes out there. But I’m good, okay? This jackass got the jump on me, that’s all.”

He didn’t believe it, or Cya would have been more harsh with him. Instead, she raised her eyebrows and waited for the moment where he shifted from foot to foot and dropped his arms and his gaze.

She glanced back at Leo, wondering if he remembered when he was that young and stupid. Time enough for that conversation later.

“By the time I’m done with you, it will be a lot harder for anyone to get the drop on you. And step one is realizing that somebody can and will.”

And, because he was her Kept and this one, damnit, she could protect, she kept going. “In the meantime, this is my city. If anyone other than Leo here attacks you, you tell them that you Belong to me. If that doesn’t stop them, you can feel free to tell anyone who can hear you that you’re mine. For this year, at least, that ought to keep you safe.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1033777.html. You can comment here or there.

A Double-AU Crossover, part the third: Explanations

Sep2

First: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/955989.html
Second: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/958239.html

“Tony.” Pepper was not amused. She was clearly the opposite of amused. Tension was vibrating from every fiber of her bring. “Natasha. What is going on?”

When in doubt, tell the truth. It had gotten Tony through any number of situations, including “I am Iron Man.” He lifted his chin, aimed his best smile at his… whatever noun one could attach to Pepper these days, aside from “boss.”

“Pepper, I’m a fairy.”

Natasha snickered. She really should have known better. Pepper didn’t even bat an eyelash—of course she didn’t.

“First, I don’t think you can say that any more. Second, if this is about that thing with Bruce, I don’t think that’s a concern. Third, what does that have to do with this ‘Council?’ Don’t change the subject, Tony. This is a very angry-looking letter.” She shook the letter at him.

“Well, you’re, ah, a very angry-looking woman. It doesn’t always do to take things at face value, for gods’ sakes, Romanoff, stop laughing! You’re not helping!”

Romanoff smirked. “Go on, Tony. Tell her how you’re a fairy. While she’s shaking a letter from the Council. I’m sure that’s going to make everything better.”

Tactical mistake. Natasha Romanoff had made a tactical mistake. Tony took a step back as Pepper whirled on the Widow.

“Natasha! If you know what is going on, so help me God, if you have helped Tony in this nonsense…”

“Gods.” Natasha stood up a little straighter. “Tony said ‘fairy.’ The proper word is ‘gods.’“

“I don’t care if you’re sleeping with him. He sleeps with everyone, eventually.” The change in her voice, the slow drop in tone, told Tony that Pepper did really care, still.

“Technically, I rarely sleep. With anyone.” He held up a hand. “No, it’s not a technicality. And I am not entirely suicidal, and thus no, I have never gotten in bed with Agent Romanoff. That way lies madness. Further madness,” he amended.

But clarifying Romanoff’s oh-so-helpful clarification had not calmed Pepper down, although it had at least re-targeted her.

“Tony. Nat. If you do not tell me what’s going on in one minute, I…”

Tony had not been pushing Pepper past her limits for this long without learning to recognize said limits. He stepped forward, took her arms, and gave her his best apologetic face. “Pepper, I’m sorry, I really am. The truth is — the truth is, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, and I really don’t know how to prove it to you. And it’s not often I admit to not knowing something, so you can tell how serious I am. Romanoff, some backup here?”

“Perhaps this would help.” The Black Widow stepped forward — stalked, really, oh, fuck, she was on target and that target was Tony. He was going to find out really fast if he could take her in a fight or—

“Tony?” Pepper’s voice had shifted once again. This was her small-and-worried voice. “Tony? I think you should look at Nat. I…”

Tony turned. Carefully, very carefully, not letting go of Pepper and not making any sudden movements.

“Oh. Oh, is that all?” Tony found himself grinning. “She has horns. Of course she has horns, of course, nothing else would make sense.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/978324.html. You can comment here or there.

Walls, a response storylet

Aug24

Started in [personal profile] inventrix‘s DW here (and the comments)

Then here.

Now, below.

Cya left Leo’s house slowly. She walked out of the yard as if she was still, somehow, thinking he’d say “no, wait, come back.” She walked down the road, ignoring people, ignoring animals, ignoring the little voice in the back of her head that was always suggesting improvements to the city.

He sticks around because he’s crazy. THAT voice had always been there, even when it was pretty obvious Leo wasn’t so much sticking around as being tethered by ill-thought-out promises and Cya’s habit of Finding him whenever he got too far off. He sticks around because he’s tethered.

If his insanity was changing, evolving, would there still be room for the Protagonist’s Friends?

She walked to the wall around her city and climbed the ladder. It was her city; nobody was going to tell her not to be there.

“You built a real city,” he’d said. She chewed it over. Yes, yes she had. It wasn’t New York City or even Chicago or Milwaukee, but it was a city. She’d set out to make one, and she had.

“We aren’t teenagers anymore.” It was hard to argue with that, either. After all, they had grand-children who were past the teenaged years.

That was where something had gone wrong. Then he’d asked if something was wrong with him. Then he’d asked if he was insane.

She stared out at the mountains beyond her city, and the road snaking its way past Cloverleaf. She looked inwards, at the growing city she’d wrought. It would hold, she thought, even if she didn’t. It could grow now, with or without her.

Leo… Leo wasn’t exactly predictable, but he, Howard, Zita, even Gaheris, Mags, they’d always had a set of behaviours they could be trusted to act within. Cya too, of course; Cya was The Calm One.

Which explained entirely why she was crying. She bit her lip and raised her chin. Nobody would ask why the mayor of the city was sobbing on the walls, but it wasn’t particularly great for morale, either. The Mayor made things go, just like Cya always had. She didn’t bawl her eyes out.

She certainly didn’t bawl her eyes out over her friend the insane samurai. And absolutely not because he might not be insane anymore.

The drop from the walls was a long one, too long to make safely, but making the earth soft and bouncy was an old trick by now. Cya slid down to the ground and let the soft space between inner and outer walls cradle her. Nobody would see her breaking script here. Nobody would be worried by her crying.

Leo… Leo was changing.

“How bad…” It had been bad, sometimes. It had been awful sometimes. But selfishly, Cya had not minded as much as she should, because it let her be useful. It let her be needed.

“It’s nice.” And she’d done what she always did and given him what he might possibly at some point need. She’d built him a house with her own hands and Workings. She’d stocked it with food in case he visited. She’d done a bigger version of packing him a go-bag. And, sane, or becoming sane, or differently insane, whatever was going on with him — whatever she’d triggered in him — Leo had cared about as much as her angrier Kept had cared about their go-bags.

She stared blankly at the walls of her city. What in hell was she supposed to do next?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/975867.html. You can comment here or there.

A Double-AU Crossover in need of a title, part the second: Intimations

Jul7

First: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/955989.html

The tension was high in the room, and one of the most deadly people in the world was smiling at Tony. Things were about to get really, really bad.

Tony leaned back against his suit and grinned, his billionaire playboy philanthropist smile, all razzle and a little bit of dazzle. “Oh, you know me.” He flipped his hand sideways, taking in the whole tower and everything else. “I like to fuck everyone.”

He leaned forward before she could attack, which was a miracle in and of itself. She was holding back. Why was she holding back?

Hopefully, the same reason he was.

“And,” he added, in an entirely different voice, one he normally reserved for Pepper and other deadly serious situations, “I always keep my word. Including to my crew, Agent Romanoff. I seem to recall saying that the Avengers are the most important thing in my life — aside from Pepper, because you know she wouldn’t stand for being second to saving the world or anything.” He raised his eyebrows at her. Her move.

She rolled back on her heels, her hands settling at her sides. “You’re saying you’d be in a crew with a Shenera Osera.”

“No.” Tony shook his head, caught her eye, and smirked. “That would be crazy if, say, I was a Shenera Endra.” He flipped his hand negligently. “I’m an Avenger. You’re an Avenger. That makes us crew. The rest is just details.”

Deliberately, Tony threw off the most casual salute he had ever managed — it barely made it within a mile of his face — and turned back to the suit. “Could you pass me the welder?”

She was up against him before he’d finished the sentence. “You don’t like having things handed to you.” Her breath was warm on the back of his neck. In terms of stupid ways to die — well, he’d come up with worse.

“Crew, remember? Besides, Dum-E’s scared of you. You’re very intimidating.”

Natasha handed Tony the spot welder. Her hand lingered there, and her eyes lingered on his.

There were reasons he didn’t like being handed things. Tony held the eye contact. This was important.

“Tony? Tony, I know you’re in there. You’ve been avoiding your mail all week.”

Pepper had the world’s worst timing, or perhaps the world’s best. The door slid open and Pepper came around the corner, something waving in her hand.

Before Tony had had a chance to even think about moving, Romanoff was five feet away, leaning against Dum-E like he wasn’t terrified of her and studying her nails. “What did Tony do this time?”

Pepper was, of course, brilliant. She studied the two of them for a heartbeat, decided it was nothing she had to worry about, and looked directly at Tony, still shaking the letter. Proper paper, folded, he noted, with a wax seal. “Do you know what this is?”

Tony raised his eyebrows. “Heavy rag paper, looks like, someone still using the outdated system of the US Postal Service – unless they sent it by Pony Express? The Post Office machines can’t handle wax seals. They didn’t consult Stark Industries on those. That was a Hammer design.”

Pepper didn’t listen. She had quite a bit of skill not listening to Tony. “This,” she hissed, her voice soft, “Is a letter from ‘the Council,’ demanding you explain your actions. Tony, who — or what — is the Council?”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/978324.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/958239.html. You can comment here or there.

A Change in Routine, a story (beginning) for @InspectrCaracal

Jul2

Luke was waiting for Cya at the fence around Lady Maureen’s.

She was, she’d admit, predictable, but never in the sixty years that she’d been doing this had Luke stopped her. Talked to her, yes. Chatted, asked questions, sometimes even second-guessed her choices.

Something was different in his posture this time. There was something about the set of his feet and the spread of his wings that told her he wasn’t going to wait patiently, and he wasn’t here to chat.

Cya shifted her own posture, making sure she could feel the weight of every weapon she carried. She couldn’t win a fight with Luca Hunting-Hawk, certainly not on his territory. But she could make sure she got away and survived long enough to call in Boom.

He stepped forward. “Cya.”

“Sir.” She noticed, then, that he had his body and wings angled oddly. Hiding something? “Nice weather this year.”

“I have something for you.”

That’s what I’m worried about. “Sir?” He never had been great at small talk.

“I’m not something!” The complaint came from behind Luke; he shifted, folded his wings, and hauled a young man in front of him.

He was blonde, with a look Cynara recognized well – the chin, the nose, although the eyes were different. He looked more like Howard than like Leo, but they often did. And he looked not very close to either of them — but that made sense, because it’d been generations, and not every child of Aelfgar could’ve managed to have children with a sibling.

Unlike any of her favorite Aelf-get, he had a crown of horns radiating out of his blonde curls like a sunburst. Like many of them, he was wearing a seemingly perpetual scowl.

“Cya Red Doomsday, this is Apollo the Sun-fire. Apollo, this is the woman I was telling you about.”

Cya raised her eyebrows. “I don’t really do unwilling, Luke.” She couldn’t miss the way the Hawk’s fingers were pressing into the boy’s forearm.

“You used to.”

“I used to be a child. We were all children, once.” This conversation was not going where she’d thought it would. “I grew up.”

“That’s the problem.” He pushed Apollo forward; the boy tried to resist, but Luke was a force of nature. “This one didn’t. He managed to sit through four years of Addergoole and I don’t think he learned a damn thing, not the important stuff. He’s going to get himself killed out there.”

“He’s right here.” Apollo shifted as far away from Luke as the grip on his arm would allow. “And I’ll be fine. Look, I know how to fight. I’ll be able to take on anything I run into out there.”

Cya sighed quietly. “I see what you’re saying. But the thrill of the fight got old a long time ago, Luke, and I have my hands full.”

Apollo leered at her. “I’ll give you a fight, Lady.”

“Red Doomsday.” Luke’s voice grew soft and formal. “I am fond of this idiot, and he was my student. I am asking you a favor, that perhaps you might succeed where I have failed. It is not a small favor, and I pay my debts.”

Cya let that hang in the air. She looked the boy, pout, spikes, blonde hair, up and then down again.

“You.” She nodded at the kid. “You Belong to me for the next year.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/957294.html. You can comment here or there.

A Double-AU Crossover in need of a title, part the first

Jul1

“They think you’re human, you know.” Tony wasn’t looking at Romanoff; he had his head buried in his new favorite suit and one arm in what would be, if the suit were a person, the sort of compromising position that the tabloids would love to catch him in.

He didn’t have to be looking at her, of course; JARVIS was looking at her and relaying the image. Tony didn’t know if Romanoff knew that, but she did raise one elegant eyebrow at Tony’s ass. “Think?”

“You and Clint both. Rogers, the big guy, they know what they are. Thor — Thor is his own jumbo-sized issue, but I think you and I both know what he is. But you and Clint, the rest of the team thinks you’re human.”

“And you think you know differently.” She’d shifted her posture. Tony might not have noticed, but JARVIS did. She had three — no, four — weapons on her body, not counting the exquisite weapon that was her body.

Of course, she was standing in Tony’s workroom, which meant she was surrounded by his weapon. It could go either way.

Tony didn’t extricate himself from the suit. “Look. I could be wrong, in which case you can say I’m crazy, which will only be the third or fourth time today.”

“Fifth.” Her posture hadn’t relaxed.

“Fifth, fine.” He found the bolt he was trying to replace, and, for a moment, was silent, fiddling deep in his spare suit’s nether region. “Or I’m right — and I’m never wrong — in which case the real question is, do you prefer the Gods or the Law?”

Silence reigned. Romanoff, Jarvis reported, was moving, but they were micro-movements. She was considering her answer.

That wasn’t a good sign. Toss out the option that she was human — she wasn’t. Toss out the option that she was unaligned, not part of either sect of Ellehemaei — fae, fairies, elves — living on the planet. That meant she was planning on killing him, deciding if he was full of bullshit, or she was some entirely different sort of madness, which could pose some problems.

She rolled back on her heels. “You’re not going to ask if I prefer to fuck animals or break my word?” She was using the eyebrow again. Either it was reflexive, or she knew he was watching.

“Well.” She definitely knew what he was talking about. Monkey-fuckers and Oathbreakers, that’s what the two groups called each other.

Tony pulled himself out of the suit and wiped his hands down. He took his time at it, getting the grease out from his cuticles. Then, and only then, he graced Agent Romanoff with his most charming smile. “There’s no need to be rude.”

“Unless there is.” She was smiling. Tony was beginning to get worried. “So, tell me, Mr. Stark, do you prefer to fuck animals or to break your word?”

Crossover of Avengers and Fae Apoc and thus turning both of them into a bit of an AU, including there being super-science in fae apoc now.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/958239.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/955989.html. You can comment here or there.