20 Chapter 20) – Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked

At exactly 8:13am, Mara had finished making her coffee, and was slowly sipping on it to alleviate her morning drowsiness.

Preventing her from enjoying the beverage, Natasha walked back into the briefing room and announced, "The director has arrived, let's go." Before she turned around and headed towards the stairs leading up to the bungalow.

As neither myself nor my host had time to reply, we had no choice but to follow after her.

Even in the rush, Mara didn't forget to grab some of her sealed popcorn from the bowl she had stationed next to the coffee machine.

As we traversed the stairs, I returned my head and transformed Mara's clothing into our agent form, but without the face mask as she drank what was left of her coffee in one go.

Once we had made it up the stairs, instead of seeing the director stood in the bungalow, we were directed towards the back garden, while Natasha gave us the reason why, "The director travelled via Quinjet, as such, it landed out back, away from any curious eyes. According to surveillance, Tony has left his mansion, so we'll be following after him to complete the mission."

Continuing to trail after the Black Widow, we exited the bungalow to see a surprising sight.

Instead of seeing a sizable aircraft, like the Quinjet was, the garden had no visible changes other than a floating, horizontal, rectangle in the space. Said rectangle was displaying the inside of an aircraft and had a ramp lowering down in order to access the mystifying rectangle.

Mara knew of the reflector technology used to make all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s aircraft invisible through her movies, and I had been informed of it during our training with May but seeing it in reality was more impressive than I had assumed it would be.

If someone didn't know exactly what to look for, or that there was even a vehicle hidden in the area, then it would be near impossible to notice the minute refraction from the stealth technology.

Even my host was slack-jawed and halted her steps.

Evidently the ones she had seen in her movies definitely weren't as impressive as the real ones, "There's something eerie in how effective those reflective panels are. I mean it just looks like there's some kind of floating portal in the middle of the garden leading to who knows where."

Rather than turning around to respond to my host, Natasha continued walking and boarded the Quinjet.

Just as Mara was about to resume her walk to board the aircraft, someone new walked halfway down the ramp to introduce themselves.

"You must be Mara or maybe I should just call you Elysium since that would cover the both of you. Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D., nice to have you as part of the team."

Standing on the ramp was a man approximately the same height as we were in our suit form - 6'2". He had cool, golden brown, skin and appeared to be no older than his 50's, in human age. He had no hair on the top of his head but had a black goatee around his mouth. His eye was a dark brown colour, and yes that was eye, singular, as he wore a black eyepatch over the left one. The strap of the eyepatch wrapped around his head diagonally, going under his left ear and above his right eyebrow. All of his clothing was equally black and consisted of; military boots, baggy cargo pants with a belt to hold them up, a woolly turtleneck and a trench coat - partially covering a shoulder holster with accompanying pistol.

Punctuating his introduction, the director held out his hand, like all humans seemed to do, for a handshake.

With Mara having somewhat mentally prepared herself after Natasha's earlier warning, once the debrief had finished, she only blanked for a fraction of a second before she walked up to the man and shook his hand.

"As you said, I'm Mara-" Ensuring I locked the agent form like I did for her usual clothing, I created a head as my host introduced me, "-and this is Elysium or El for short."

With me nodding my head once in greeting, Mara continued, "I'm sure Nat's probably told you, but I have a thing for nicknames. I assume Nick is already short for something, so do you prefer Nick, or Fury, or is there something else you prefer?"

Letting go of the handshake before it became awkward, the director replied, "Just Fury, everyone calls me Fury. Now get on, we've got a problem that I, unfortunately, have to go deal with."

Saying such, Fury turned around to walk back into the aircraft with my host following suit as I retracted the head and unlocked the agent appearance to restore our combat capabilities.

Once Mara had made her way up the ramp, it was raised, and the Quinjet began its take-off sequence.

As per May's informational crash course, the S.H.I.E.L.D. standard Quinjet was a VTOL aircraft. VTOL stood for Vertical Take-Off and Landing, meaning that unlike commercial jets - which could only take flight on a runway - VTOL aircraft could take to the sky from a stationary position, without the need for a moving start. The wings of the jet contained turbines, similar to a helicopter, that allowed for the vertical and slow horizontal flight, while the tail of the aircraft had jet engines for fast horizontal flight.

The inside of the Quinjet was surprisingly empty. According to the description of the aircraft, its main body was essentially hollow to increase the maximum size of whatever load was required to be moved. However, since it was being used solely for Fury's transit, the cargo space was left void. This, thus, allowed for the passengers to stand, if they so desired, rather than being forced to sit into the seats situated on the walls of the vehicle.

As Mara finished looking around the interior with great interest, Natasha called out to her, "You might want to buckle in Mara. Although it's not too difficult to stay standing during flight and take-off, it does still take some getting used to. Wouldn't want you falling over in front of the director on your first meeting, would we?"

Sat directly opposite to the spy, looking at a screen on his lap, Fury gave Mara a quick glance after Natasha's words, before promptly returning to whatever director things he was doing on the screen.

Not noticing the action from the director as she was facing Natasha, Mara replied, "I can't tell if that's advice, or a challenge, Nat? But I'll take it as the latter, you're on."

Rather than move to sit down, Mara stayed exactly in the centre of the cargo bay. She spread her feet shoulder width apart and bent her knees slightly to lower her centre of gravity in preparation for the instability that would undoubtedly occur.

Without having to wait for long, the Quinjet began to lift off the ground and caused my host to sway side-to-side slightly at the movement. With only a little correction and adjustment, Mara was able to stop her swaying to stand somewhat still during the ascent.

Fortunately, Mara didn't get ahead of herself and start bragging to Natasha about her slight achievement.

Only a few seconds after she had stabilised, my host needed to change her stance again as the Quinjet changed from its turbine powered vertical flight, into its jet powered horizontal flight.

The force of the change in direct wasn't too much for Mara to handle, but the stance she was in to counter the vertical movement worked against her when it came to the horizontal force.

Although she quickly adjusted her feet so one was in front of the other, instead of being parallel to her shoulders like previously, she still couldn't help but take a step backwards to prevent herself from falling over.

Repeating the process of stabilising herself again, this time Mara looked at Natasha with a proud expression on her face, earning herself some half-hearted praise, "Although you weren't exactly perfect with needing to take a step back, it's still somewhat impressive. But considering you also have superpowers; I wouldn't expect any less."

Deflating at her words, my host quelled her slightly increased ego and plopped herself down on the seat next to Natasha while grumbling, "You can just praise me you know?"

With a seemingly genuine smile on her face, Natasha replied, "Can't let you get a big head and have another Tony Stark to deal with now, can we?"

Mara nodded in agreement to Natasha's words as Fury inserted himself into the conversation at the mention of Stark, "Speaking of Stark, let me explain what is expected of you on your assignment Mara."

Re-focusing her attention onto Fury, Mara leaned forward in her seat to show she was paying attention as the director continued, "I'm sure agent Romanoff has already briefed you on the mission we're heading towards, so I won't waste our time by repeating it. Once we've finished this job, you'll be running protection detail for Stark, at least until he's healthy enough to use the Iron Man suit without killing himself. When the previous plan was drawn up, we were going to put him on house arrest with Coulson babysitting him. Now that you're in the picture, we can change the plan to be more accommodating of Stark's… uncooperative nature. Your job is simple, wherever he goes, you go. You'll essentially be acting as his shadow for the time being while he's vulnerable. We'll give you a communicator similar to the one you used for Stark's birthday. Only this one will track your movements and will also allow you to connect to other S.H.I.E.L.D. communication lines. Now, even with the tracking, Stark is good with technology so he could build some way to circumvent it. To prevent that, you'll have to notify Coulson, who's heading the assignment, whenever you move from the mansion. If Stark becomes unruly and tries to put on any of his Iron Man suits, or just annoys you in general, you have express permission to - how did you put it? – 'Deck him in the schnoz'. Understood?"

Nodding in confirmation, Mara verbally replied with, "Understood." Before the pilot of the Quinjet notified Fury that we were about to reach our destination.

"Sir, we're coming up to the location of the target."

Standing up from his seat, Fury walked to the back of the pilot and co-pilot's seats as he told them, "Don't take us down too close, we don't want to draw too much attention."

Turning to look at Natasha, the director issued his orders, "Ms. Romanoff, take Mara with you to secure the area once we land. I'll get Stark to sit down for a talk."

As professional as ever, Natasha answered with, "Copy." As the Quinjet changed back into vertical flight mode and landed a few blocks away from Randy's Donuts, where Tony was.

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Walking into the donut shop through the kitchen entrance, Natasha pulled out an FBI badge and ordered the staff, "FBI. Please vacate the premises. Leave through the back door immediately. Do not panic. We need to secure the premises for a potential threat, but you are currently not at risk."

Although the donut shop kitchen staff had confused looks on their faces, they all nodded and exited through the back door as directed.

Turning to my host, Natasha said, "I'll go and notify the staff at the counter as well any civilians inside. You stay here and direct them all out the back door, okay?"

Bobbing her head, Mara responded, "Sure thing."

Following the spy's direction to a T, Mara directed the remaining staff and the customers through the kitchen towards the back door in a single file line.

After only a couple of minutes of entering the building, all of the staff and customers had been removed from the premises.

When Natasha came back into the kitchen, Mara was munching on some of her popcorn but stopped said munching to ask, "Hey Nat, why was that so easy? I would have thought some of the customers would refuse to leave since they've got food and everything in there."

To which the woman being questioned answered with, "Sometimes they do, but most of the time just seeing the FBI badge is enough to make them comply, which is why I bring it out first. Technically S.H.I.E.L.D. is a higher ranked organisation, but with all the secrecy behind it not many civilians know it exists, so showing that doesn't get many results. Everyone knows the FBI, and since it's a real badge, they take whatever we say as fact."

Hearing the chime of a bell, both women looked at the door leading into the dining area before Natasha turned back to my host and pointed over her shoulder at the dining area saying, "I need to lock the back door to make sure there are no interruptions. You can go through there if you want? It might help Fury convince Tony that he needs to stop using his suit."

With my host replying, "Sure, I'll see you shortly. Oh, and Nat? Great hair by the way. Loving the wavy look." She walked through the door and headed towards the booth behind where Fury was sat, with Tony opposite him.

Rather than sit on the booth seating with them though, Mara sat herself on the table behind Fury and brought her feet to rest on the bench seat such that she was looking over Fury's shoulder at the Iron Man. She didn't sit in the empty space next to the director in order to leave room for Natasha to sit next to Fury when she came back from locking the back door.

With her silver popcorn packet in her left hand, Mara raised her right one to wave at Tony, as he stared at her, and she asked, "Yo, sore head?"

Taking a second to think about the question, Tony didn't even remove the sunglasses that covered his eyes as he replied, "Yeah, I'm a bit hungover. Drank so much I can't even remember when I went to sleep."

Mara giggled at the comment but didn't respond as she resumed her popcorn snacking with a smile on her face.

Tony then turned back to Fury and asked, "You had a spy watching over me?"

Now it was Fury's turn to chuckle as he replied, "Who Mara? Nah she's a new hire. Only been on the job for a few days, she hasn't even been combat trained yet. Isn't that right Mara?"

To which my host, who was still smiling, performed a faux salute and retorted with, "Yes sir, Mr. Fury sir."

Before Tony could ask anything else however, Natasha walked through the kitchen door and headed towards the booth, "We've secured the perimeter, but I don't think we should hold it for too much longer."

Instead of just staring at Natasha like he did to Mara, Tony lowered his sunglasses and let out a confused, "Huh?"

Fury sported a wide smile when he saw Tony's reaction, and he only found the situation even funnier when the Iron Man said, "You're… fired."

Sitting down on the bench, Natasha, using the genuine legal knowledge she learnt for her undercover role, cleverly responded with, "That's not up to you."

Fury moved his arm, that was resting on the back of the seat Natasha sat on, to wrap around the spy's shoulder and officially introduced them to each other, "Tony, I want you to meet Agent Romanoff."

Picking up the conversation from her introduction, Natasha said, "Nice to meet you. I'm Natasha Romanoff, a S.H.I.E.L.D. shadow. Once we knew you were ill, I was tasked to watch over you by director Fury."

Tony propped his left elbow on the table and leaned his head against his hand as he smarmily said, "I think you owe me an apology."

Taking his arm off Natasha, Fury ignored Tony's remarks, "You've been very busy. You made your ex-assistant, now girlfriend, the CEO of your company. You're giving away all your stuff. You let your friend fly away with 1 of your suits. Now with all that to go off, if I didn't know better-"

Cutting the director off, Tony interrupted, "You don't know better. I didn't give it to him. He took it."

Finding amusement in Tony's apparent annoyance, Fury replied, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. He took it? You're Iron Man and he just took it from you? The little brother walked in there, had a fight with you where you wrecked your house and then just took your suit after you ended up getting your ass kicked by Mara back there?"

Turning to look back and forth between Natasha and my host, Fury, in feigned confusion, asked, "Is that possible?"

Natasha was the one that responded, as Mara was too busy giggling at Tony's facial expression which was caused by Fury's incredulous acting, "Well, according to Mr. Stark's database security guidelines, and the courtroom hearing, there are redundancies to prevent unauthorized usage. So, no. It shouldn't be possible."

Seeing that he was fighting a losing battle, Tony gave in and asked, "What do you want from me?"

Natasha took that as a signal to stand up and walked towards the back kitchen, while Fury replied, "What do we want from you? Nuh-uh-uh. What do YOU want from ME? You have become a problem. A rather big problem that, much to my displeasure, I have to deal with. Contrary to what you may think, you are not the center of my, or anyone else's, universe. I have much bigger problems than you in the world to deal with."

Since Tony was trying to ignore Fury's scolding, he wasn't paying attention when Natasha returned. Fury clicked his fingers and pointed at the Iron Man as he said, "Hit him."

To which Natasha injected Tony with the Lithium Dioxide that would abate his Palladium poisoning symptoms. The act of which, cause Tony to immediately sit up straight from his previously leaning position and groan while asking, "Ugh, the fuck? Are you gonna drug and blackmail me or steal my liver or somethin'? Could you please at least wait until I've recovered from my hangover? What did she just inject into me?"

Knowing that Tony wouldn't sit still unless he got an explanation, Fury answered, "What Ms. Romanoff just injected you with is called Lithium Dioxide. It's gonna take care of the brunt of the symptoms. We're trying to get you back in working condition."

Trying to play down the seriousness of his condition, Tony said, "Give me a couple crates of that. I'll be good as new in no time."

For the first time in a while, it was Mara that spoke up as she took a small break from her snacking, "It's not a cure Tony, it just abates the symptoms while you or S.H.I.E.L.D. find a cure."

Piggybacking off what Mara had said, Fury added, "And it doesn't look like it's gonna be an easy fix considering the state you're in."

Regaining some of his previous confidence, Tony retorted, "I know. I'm good at this kind of stuff. I've been looking for a suitable replacement for the Palladium core, but nothing works. I've tried every combination, every permutation, of every known element."

Unimpressed by the Iron Man's statement, the director replied, "Well I'm here to tell you, you haven't tried them all."

Looking at Fury like he had grown a second head, Mara interrupted before Tony could respond to the director's remark, "He's telling you not to roll over already Tony. Anyone can see you've basically given up on staying alive, so get your head out your arse and fix yourself."

Standing up from the booth, Fury backed up Mara's statement, "She's right you know. You've got the eyes of a dead man walking. Let's head back to the ruins you call a house, so I can explain how your babysitting is gonna work."

Caught off-guard by the decision, Tony questioned, "Babysitting?"

Again, Mara was the one who spoke, "Well we can't have you flying around in that tin can when it's killing you even faster, can we? The ride's parked round the corner, chop-chop."