12

Chapter 12: Is It A Master Plan?

Notes:

So I'm almost to chapter thirty on the drafts of this sucker and still don't see the end anywhere in sight....so uh...it got bigger then expected...I was originally going to end this after Daisy left to go do AoS plot but the fam was together. And then do like another six chapters of a short sequel. That was silly. I'm Dumb a Dumb. At this point if I say the words 'oh it'll just be a few chapters, a short fic. Ya'll should just laugh.

Chapter Text

Daisy felt...better after last night. Not that she could quite explain it. But she did. She stirred at her cereal. "Does trolling internet trolls count as a hobby?"

"Huh?" Darcy blinked at her from where she was curled over her coffee. Her hangover lurking around her.

She poked at her cereal. "Aunt May wants me to get a hobby that isn't hero stuff or hacking."

"Trolling out then." Darcy rubbed at her eyes and looked at her with groggy eyes. "Bread making?"

Daisy couldn't help the face she made. While joining Aunt May for the occasional cooking class was fine, actually cooking was… "No."

"I knit? You could try knitting." Darcy offered out before sipping her coffee as if it was her salvation.

Daisy considered that and just the thing was… "I'm not good at doing nothing."

"Huh." Darcy didn't offer anything else, but she looked kinda like death. There had to have been a lot of margaritas drunk between her and Jane last night.

She tapped her spoon on the edge of her bowl. "Do you think neighborhood basketball counts as a hobby?"

"Why don't you just get a civilian job? It'll get you away from the hero-ing and the fam." Darcy shot her a glare. "And either eat the food or dump it."

Daisy cocked her head to one side. "Fair enough." She ate her cereal.

Daisy flipped through the fliers she'd picked up at the local coffee shops. "So do you think I should apply for the job at the rock climbing gym or the extreme obstacle gym?"

"How can you still move?" Wanda panted from where she was sprawled on top of the shipping container.

She looked over and laughed. "Your powers are so cool."

"I think my bruises have bruises." Wanda poked at a paint splatter on her stomach.

Daisy set the fliers to the side. "You're still in the top three sexiest Avengers."

"Top three?" Wanda blinked but looked at her curiously.

Daisy grinned. "Well you and Natasha, then no list of the hottest Avengers can not have Thor on it. Man's an alien prince of hotness."

"I will take your word for it." Wanda finally agreed after staring at her for a slow few seconds.

Daisy decided to give Wanda a break. She had shot her several times. "Your powers are far more defensive than mine. Or have more defensive application. Mine are kind of…"

"You are getting better at using your vibrations to disintegrate projectiles." Wanda offered.

She nodded at that. It was true. "I really should have found more time for training my powers when I was with SHIELD. Being able to do more than just shoot vibrations at stuff would have been super useful." Daisy mimed her outstretched hand motion.

Wanda snorted. "Your powers are quite formidable offensively. And from what you've said you have come a long way in a very short period of time."

"Babysitting the kid is...very low stress and doesn't take much time." Daisy shrugged. She didn't know how to articulate just how busy she'd been as an agent. Looking back it probably wasn't healthy to sleep, eat, work, and everything all in the same location. Actually video games and surfing the web had been the only things that hadn't been SHIELD related she had done for four years. And the web surfing had been 90% for SHIELD.

Wanda's brow furrowed slightly. "You are projecting quite strongly today."

"Lots of feelings were talked about last night." Daisy had relaxed as she'd gotten used to Wanda picking things up from her. She mostly trusted the other woman. Just...not all the way in her head.

But Wanda seemed to understand that. "Pietro called last night." She looked away from Daisy and up at the blue sky above them. "He and Clint are going to come back to the tower next week. I haven't been separated from him for this long before. It's...I miss him like a limb that's been taken from me. But…"

"You're afraid he won't fit the same as before." Daisy pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.

Wanda's accent thickened. "Exactly."

"I left my team." Daisy considered how to put it. Honestly Coulson was so much better at these speeches then her. "They never stopped looking for me. And when I went back it was... that we were family hadn't changed. If I hadn't of had here it would have been so easy to just slip back into who I had been with them."

Wanda's voice was soft. "After the bombs it was just Pietro and me. We did everything together, let Hydra experiment on us together. I knew if he was by my side we could even challenge the great Avengers. But then he was shot."

"And didn't want you to see him weak." Daisy got it.

Wanda's head turned, meeting her eyes. "You understand."

"Pretty much." Daisy didn't flinch away from the way Wanda seemed to see so much more than she said.

Wanda picked up one of the fliers. "So why are you getting a job at a gym? Your father is Tony Stark. Surely you don't need the money?"

"First he doesn't know that. So no fancy trust fund for me." Daisy's head tilted to the side. Well, Tony probably didn't know and if he did he hadn't said anything. So same difference. "And second it's not about the money."

"What is it about then? It doesn't feel like you want it." Wanda frowned.

She sighed. "Aunt May wants us all to have lives outside of the hero thing. And I agree with her, but it's kinda hypocritical of me if I make the kid keep a social life but don't have one of my own. And I never graduated so it limits the jobs I can do."

"Why not go back to school? Or just make the records." Wanda actually looked confounded on that one. "You made fake schooling records for me last week."

Daisy's lips pulled up. "I gave you equivalent American certification. Which you were really bad at math."

"You do know I can give you nightmares, yes?" Wanda whacked at her leg with a limp arm.

She snickered. "But you won't because I asked you not to."

"I could change my mind." Wanda looked at the flier again. "What is 'Ninja Warrior' training?"

Daisy nabbed the flier from Wanda and reread that part. "Huh, extreme obstacle gym it is then. And it's...actually are you doing anything besides worrying about your brother tonight?"

"No…?" Wanda looked at her cautiously.

She grinned. "You should come over for dinner then. We can watch some episodes."

"Will I at any point be shot at or required to do a push up?" Wanda's voice was surprisingly pained.

Daisy laughed outright. "No, popcorn with chocolate however is included in the offer."

////

Darcy tightened a final screw before leaning back. "Ok boss lady, try it now!"

Jane hit the switch.

The gravitational monitoring array whirred to life. There was a tense moment, but it didn't spark.

"It works!" Darcy hugged Jane. She pulled back. "Now lunch!"

Jane looked at the gravitational array. "But we have to calibrate it now that it's online. And then hook it into the rest of the system. Which will give us new data and some of the old data can be adjusted-"

"No." Darcy stayed firm, even if she kinda wanted to do that too. "We are going to eat like normal human beings. We are humans not science gremlins. Or I'm not a science gremlin and I refuse to let you miss meals."

"But the readings!" Jane protested.

She stayed firm. "Ian can handle it." Darcy saw the continued protest. "I'll have FRIDAY lock you out of the lab for an hour every day for lunch if I have to."

"Your doctorate has made you bossy." Jane grabbed her flannel and headed for the door though.

Darcy grinned and trotted after her besty, pushing her glasses back up her nose. "So there's this etheopian place I was thinking we could check out?"

"Sure, we haven't had that since London." Jane pulled her hair back into a ponytail.

She hooked their arms together. "Come Janey, excellent food awaits. And we're one step closer to opening a portal and dragging Thor's hunky ass back to earth."

"Darcy!" Jane's cheeks flushed.

She shrugged unrepentantly. "Tis true my sister from another mister. Ooo! I have Stark money now, we should see if we can make you an intergalactic cellphone or something."

Darcy blinked as she spotted Tony fiddling with her tools on her desk. "Poprocks, what up?"

"I hear my Spawn has been very naughty." Tony leaned against her desk, his face unbearably smug.

She pushed her glasses up. "I live to break the rules. Though I was under the impression that that was a genetic trait."

"I was considering giving Quake the shovel talk." His eyes glinted. "Or maybe the missile talk. But then it dawned on me. I have sneaky, lying spawn."

Darcy snorted. "I would have paid to see you give her the shovel talk. Like so much money. All the money."

"You spent all your money." Tony's lips twitched.

She pulled her new screwdriver out of his fidgety hands. "At least you can now say your Spawn got to punch Captain American in his perfect teeth? I'm guessing it was the united front in the gym that gave it away?"

"I'm insulted it took that long for me to put it together." He picked up a pair of pliers and pointed them at her nose. "I accept this only because it was my spawn pulling one over me."

Darcy grinned. "This a good time to mention we've been funneling .2% of your personal wealth into funding the foster system?"

"Is this when parents ground their children? Very well. You are grounded, no more of the good coffee for you. You must suffer the sludge they drink in the labs." His mouth pulled up into an amused expression. "Only .2%?"

She shrugged. "Well technically we're funneling a full 1.6% of the Stark personal fortune to various charities around the world. Totes my idea by the by. Call it unpaid alimony our mums never got. Ignore or be added to the taser list."

"The taser list?" Tony lit up. "I just realized my spawn have downed Thor and Steve!"

Darcy patted him on the shoulder. "Without fancy robot suits even."

"As expected of my progeny." He held out a Starkpad. "If you hire a PR team for the Avengers will you please stop doing whatever it is you've been doing to the media. Two generals resigning in shame, one of them being brought up on charges is more than enough chaos for a while."

She nabbed the Starkpad and held it to her chest. "Thank Thor. How you didn't already have an Avenger PR team I don't know. But I'll have a list for you by the end of the day."

"You are eerily like Pepper sometimes." Tony cleared his throat and held out a box.

Darcy set the Starkpad aside and accepted the box. She looked inside and then back up at him. Because it was very clearly a high tech eye mask. "Hate to disappoint but my superpowers involve toasting pop tarts, forcing scientists to eat, making Jane's creations work with 30% less 'boom', and knitting."

"You've got more powers than that." He looked smug. "But no, for Daisy. Aunt Parker said the Kid's suit was like a project of yours. Gotta keep the progeny alive, so improvement. Not that improving a fabric face mask is difficult."

Darcy picked up the mask. It was gorgeously crafted, didn't even look electronic to the untrained eye. But her eye was trained and that was definitely a tricked out mask. Probably infrared vision, definitely a built in comm system. She grinned. "What are you doing the rest of the day Poprocks?"

"Hyperventilating in the bathroom because I apparently have three spawn to traumatize, then scotch inspired robot building." Tony's voice held enough sarcasm to drown the city. Unfortunately for him Darcy could spot that was probably far closer to the truth then he was implying.

She set the box down and patted his shoulder. "Your awkward is actually painful to me. Come, we can make new gauntlets for Daisy. We couldn't afford the stuff to do more than fix up her old ones before."

////

Peter yanked his mask off as he came shooting in through the open side window. "Daisy! The craziest thing just happened to me! These guys were robbing an ATM with these high tech weapons, and they were wearing Avenger masks which is just ironic you know? But I had it and then this one guy used one of the weapons and it like cut the bank front off. So I had to go and save Mr Delmar and his cat. Which they got away. But those weapons were too high tech for just regular robbers to have."

"What type of weapons?" Daisy was up and around the table eyeing him for injuries.

He waved his hands. "One of them was like gravity manipulating? I couldn't really move? It felt very weird."

"Which bank was this at?" Daisy grabbed her laptop. "We should be able to find the surveillance footage."

"O' Queens." He frowned. "How do jerks like that get weapons like that?"

Daisy frowned as she typed. "No where good. Darcy will have to look at the footage to tell us exactly what they do. But we can start tracking them down from here."

"I'll make some hot chocolate then." Aunt May squeezed Daisy's shoulder. "And you young man go get out of your suit. No suits in the house."

Peter flushed, but zipped up the stairs. This was big! His first big investigation!

Peter sipped at his second mug of hot chocolate. "So the bank was the third robbery in Queens using high tech weapons?"

"Surprisingly high tech." Daisy agreed. "Someone is definitely selling new weapons and they need to be off the street."

Aunt May set down a bowl of popcorn. "Is this one for the police?"

"No, they don't have that kind of firepower and too small time for the Avengers." Daisy leaned back in her seat. "I can set up an alert for the kid and I. Which if you get the alert, you wait for me before you engage ok?"

Peter's eyes lit up. "But I get to engage?"

"Yeah you can engage." Daisy flicked his ear. "Not till I get there though. But you did good with the wasp things."

////

Tony waived the holographic display up. "What about a vibranium based alloy?"

"Even with the vibranium at that thin her quakes could damage it." His spawn contradicted. "You need twice the thickness so we have a hexagonal build to distribute the force. I've recorded her vibrations at the strength of 6.5."

He whistled, that amount of force, localized and controlled the damage that could do. "Is her power output stable?"

"I'm not sure. It's not like she can use her powers to their full extent without shattering her bones." Darcy reached out magnifying the nanobot build and changing the wiring. "Look, we can change the inter-connectivity. Instead of all of them connecting to a central program we make it a swarm. Each one acting independently but in communication with the others."

Tony swiped to a digital version of the process. "What if we add .3 millimeters to the base we could connect the control mechanism to the mask."

"And the mask gives audio control." Darcy's eyes lit up as she rotated the gauntlets. "Expand the base by 2.5 millimeters and we have room to add in more than just protection."

He added in the new values, and that was room to add all sorts of special bits. "How do you feel about built in tasers?"

"Only if we included dendrotoxin darts." Darcy grinned pulling up the blue prints from one of his old projects on non-lethal darts.

Tony raised his hand for a fist bump. "Not bad Spawn."

"Well I am your kid Poprocks." She bumped his fist.

Tony leaned back. "Start synthesizing FRIDAY." He poured two tumblrs of scotch and held one out to his Spawn. "I like celebrating a job well done."

"Really not a scotch gal, got any vodka?" Darcy opened up his drink cupboard and made a sound of success while grabbing the worst vodka in there and pulling it out. "And I know you have weird rich people juice."

He scoffed as he watched her rooting around in his minifridge. "You definitely don't get your taste from me. I didn't even know I had that."

"Well that's unfortunate, vodka is where it's at bitch." She gave a wiggle as she yanked out his kiwi smoothie and then proceeded to dump an...impressive amount of vodka into it.

Tony felt rather smug while dumping one tumblr into the other and then downing it all. "So I know I'm not great dad material. But want to explain why your very sizable trust fund is gone? Like you blew through millions in weeks."

"Changing the world's expensive Poprocks." Darcy raised her vodka smoothie towards him and took a truly impressive gulp of it. "Sides my prototype got bought up last week. I'll make it back, I got a few of your brains."

He gaped. "I didn't just hear that. What did you give it to saving puppies or something?"

"The Wakandan Embassy for reparations and rebuilding in Lagos and every legit Sokovian charity I could find." Darcy cocked a brow in challenge.

Tony poured himself another drink. "So what's you and the others' endgame? You've all got the Stark ambition. And I know you're plotting together. I talked to May Parker, nice lady, mediocre cook, clearly adores you all. But she's not the mastermind type."

"She's getting to be a pretty good shot." Darcy smirked. "And I know Daisy showed her how to put a smug asshole into a world of pain." She leaned against a table. "But fine we've got an evil plot. It's called Inhumans are people too, the Avengers don't have an official PR team till tomorrow morning, and Hydra is an evil fungus."

He huffed. "Save the world then. A herd of baby Starks would decide to do that."

"You think we can't?" Darcy challenged. "None of us are as smart as you generally. But I'm pretty sure I'll be out building you in a few years. Peter made web fluid under the desk in chemistry class, and Daisy, well Daisy is one of the best hackers in the world and her powers are probably growing. I figure we stand a pretty good shot."

Tony poured himself another drink. "I'll bite. What am I doing in this master plan of yours?"

"Not trying to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. I mean you don't even have the second best shoulders for world carrying on the team." Darcy stepped forward and patted his cheek. "It's cool, we got you Poprocks. Though the kid's a hugger so you're going to have to get used to that."

He twitched. "I don't do hugs."

"You do now Poprocks." Darcy snickered. "Oh and secret tip, Daisy could use a weird uncle figure. She'll punch you so hard you won't be able to drink without a straw if you try the whole dad schtick on her."

Tony blinked. "Well that's frightening, and not enlightening at all."

"She's got PTSD up the ass like you do." Darcy threw back the rest of the vodka smoothie. "So how do you feel about a tricked out taser for your oldest spawn? Cause I could use a new taser. McTaser has reached the end of his natural life span. So many frat boys, only so many charges." She sniffed theatrically.

And yep, he was so much more comfortable with that. "What type of tricked out are you thinking for McTaser II?"

"Well, concealment is important since tasers are totes not legal here in the Big Apple." She made finger guns at him. "So, how do you feel about nanobots? Like you got the mechanic candy store here. Let's make the coolest taser in the world Poprocks. One that looks like a fancy bangle or something when not turning assholes to slobbering wrecks so I don't get fined?"

Tony turned to the holotable. "You heard the Spawn, bring up some specs FRIDAY."

"You know I appreciate the thought on the kill setting, but maybe we should call it something else? Like kill setting not very PC." Darcy looked up from their new schematics.

Tony nodded thoughtfully. "We can call it Supersoldier setting." His Spawn was going to send anyone who messed with her straight to hell.