Ch13. Overwatch

Tony sat behind the work desk in his workshop and settled his back in the backrest. His bed was enticingly calling him for a not-so-quick fun in the sheets but this was more important than sleeping.

"Okay, FRIDAY. Lay it onto me. What are the results?" Tony asked.

"Yes, Boss. We have managed to hack into Shield servers, not fully as that would definitely start alarms, but getting to cameras was not particularly difficult."

An image of Nick Fury sitting behind his desk in his office and working, hunched over some paper with a frown on his lips appeared on Tony's work desk, making his lips twitch.

'Thank God he is not gender-bent!' He mentally exclaimed while keeping a straight face outwardly.

Another, this time a recording, appeared next to the first image. On it was a stocky short man who was shooting a bow and nimbly moving all around, shooting people with unbelievable accuracy found only in action movies.

If Tony didn't know better, he would have thought this was some kind of new trailer or something.

"Unfortunately, we were unable to locate the Black Widow as she is supposed to be on a secret mission in Romania." FRIDAY said, her tone holding just a hint of sadness.

"Doesn't matter. You will get the Spy-Spider Lady later."

After he said that, another picture appeared on Tony's work desk. This time it was a white lanky man in military uniform also signing paperwork with a disgruntled expression.

For some reason, the sight of others being drowned in paperwork made Tony happy.

As if sensing his elation, FRIDAY started speaking again, "We have located General Thaddeus Ross and promptly started causing trouble for him. So far, we have mixed up some of his virtual paperwork, redirected important emails to the bin folder, made sure some of his emails did not reach the recipients, and a few other bothersome things in the range of our capabilities. For the foreseeable future, the General will have too much paperwork and blunders to correct that his threat level was significantly reduced." She finished in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Good job, FRIDAY!" Tony exclaimed while snickering in his head. There was no better way to deal with the annoying enemies that love to use laws and regulations against you than to bury them in a literal swamp of bureaucracy until there is no visible way out of that kind of hell. And feeling light as a feather, his conscience not burdened at all, Tony uttered the damning sentence, "Keep it up."

The next image appeared under the one on which Fury still wrestled with his paperwork and on it was a younger version of Bruce Banner. Unfortunately, this was just a blurred photo from a street camera.

Tony knew it will probably take some weeks yet before anyone gets their hands on the photo so his next decision was not particularly difficult.

"Delete it." He ordered.

While he doubted it would lead anyone to Banner's whereabouts but there was no need to leave behind it be.

"Done, Boss." FRIDAY confirmed.

The next image appeared and Tony frowned.

'I will have to recreate the holographic technology sooner rather than later.' He really found it uncomfortable to be hunched over a small work desk when he was used to holographic projections from his future.

The next image was of Aldrich Killian and with it were presented proofs that the A.I.M. was funded by companies Tony remembered being under the influence of Hydra.

'Another problem I will have to deal with sooner rather than later.' He frowned.

The problem was, blatantly attacking Killian would alert Hydra. The last time Killian attacked Tony so there was nothing strange about Tony retaliating. Especially since the prick kidnapped Pepper. Tony had no desire to put Pepper into that kind of situation again but he would have to handle A.I.M. and Killian very carefully.

"And the... er... how was her name again? Mayer? Meyer?" Tony tried to remember but his brain was shooting blanks.

"You mean Maya Hansen, Boss?" FRIDAY helpfully asked and Tony snapped his fingers in a eureka moment.

"Yes! That's her name! What about her?"

If he managed to kidna-, er... acquire the lead scientist behind Extremis now, there is a very small, almost negligible, chance that Killian would be able to finish it without her.

"Nothing, Boss. She is spending most of her time in the laboratory and her computer there is not connected to the web. We have no information about her or her research for now."

"Well, it was only a month so far so that's fine." Tony hummed.

There were several other targets for observations but they could wait. Some of them are still deeply frozen so they wouldn't spoil more than they already are... like Captain America and the Winter Soldier. Some of them were behind advanced anti-hacking protections like the royal family of Wakanda. Some had to be observed carefully like Alexander Pierce. Some were just living their normal lives with nothing important to show for it like Rhodey. Some were still in their 'serve the country' days like Sam Wilson. And some were pissed at Tony like Pepper.

Tony suddenly yawned and realized how tired he really was. "Yeah, time for bed. Good job, J, FRIDAY. Inform me if the situation changes." He praised them one last time as he stood up and started walking out of his workshop. "G'night!"

...

Four days passed in relative peace.

Pepper was still miffed with Tony but she was slowly calming down and her 'We are not friends' game crumbled by the third day as she couldn't just keep being nonpersonal with Tony. Unlike in his past, he found that Pepper and Happy were much closer to him than before.

He loved and hated it both with passion depending on which of the two suited him at the moment best...

Happy was cool with his disappearance act and when they met for the first time after Tony's month off, he gave Tony a thumbs-up behind Pepper's back. Tony could only mentally facepalm while returning Happy a somewhat forced smile.

The guy definitely thought Tony had some kind of sex marathon during his disappearance act. It was too embarrassing to try setting him straight. Especially because Tony could totally see his past self doing something like that.

The biggest excitement in Tony's quiet inventing life during these four days was a visit from Obadiah Stane.

He came to tell Tony the board of directors want to sue him because he was not acting in the best interest of the company.

Tony's reaction?

He said, "Okay." And returned back to his workshop.

When Obadiah tried to get in, Tony's security system showed its worth and Obadiah was unable to get past the first door.

In the end, the old bearded baldy just bumped the door with a fist and with a sour and angry face turned around and left.

There was no need for a talk between them. Letting him believe that he was still deep in his petulant stage was beneficial for Tony.

All in all, the world spun without a problem and nobody tried to kill Tony. It was a good four days!

Unfortunately for Tony, it couldn't last...

"Boss, Miss Black Widow has returned from her mission in Romania and was instantly assigned a new one." FRIDAY suddenly reported during a nice quiet evening of the fourth day when Tony was deep in the circuits of his project number three.

"Yeah? What of it?" He asked, not even deeming it important to look away from the wires he was trying to connect in a way that wouldn't make the device instantly short-circuit. He knew how to do them in a way that worked but he reckoned it could be improved bud damn if it wasn't irritating!

"Her new long-term job is to get employment at the Stark Industries, quickly climb the career ladder, and get closer to its higher-ups. Specifically, one, Tony Stark." FRIDAY narrated without any preamble and Tony's head shot up in surprise.

Unluckily, right above his head was Dum-E holding an electric torch. Tony hit his head pretty hard on his robot and exclaimed, "Motherfucker!" before hissing in pain.

Tony knew Natasha will be joining the Stark Industries soon but he had no idea it would be this soon. In hindsight, joining a declining company and quickly climbing its ranks was much easier than if the company was in a good state so it made a sort of sense.

"Also... she is acting kind of weird, Boss."