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Tony had looked down at the Maximoff twins, held down by his suits. His eyes were cold.
‘Tony!’ Steve barked, held down by another when he’d rushed in and tried to fling his shield at Tony. ‘Your bombs ruined their lives! You owe them!’
‘I don’t play ball with crazy people,’ Tony said coldly. ‘I’m not gonna start just because you buy into their sob story.’
‘They helped us, Tony!’ Steve argued.
Tony turned and pulled out his cell phone. He ignored the yelling and the screaming. He was pleased to note that Clint took aim at Wanda and Natasha took aim at Pietro. Bruce calmly cut off Wanda’s high-pitched ranting by informing her that he could kill her without changing colour. Steve still kept protesting that they were “on our side”.
That was probably what they’d been counting on.
Too bad for them, they were a dime a dozen as far as Tony was concerned.
Tony lifted the phone to his ear. ‘Rueben, I have two Tony Stark Is To Blame nutjobs over here. But they have superpowers. Can you send anyone to deal with them?’
‘Is it Tuesday already?’ Reuben Magnussen quipped. ‘What are their powers?’
‘Super-speed and mental manipulation – and no morals in using the latter,’ Tony said. ‘Also Cap is very enthusiastic in vouching for them.’
‘As in...?’
‘As in I had to use one of my suits to subdue him too.’
Reuben was silent for a moment, in which time Natasha chuckled in understanding. Then the man on the other end clicked his tongue. ‘I know who to send.’
***
Five minutes later, the portals opened up and four people stepped through. Thor had arrived shortly before. Tony quickly got profiles on each of them on the lenses of his sunglasses.
Kolya Zima – Russia
Sharee Pertinicle, PhD, archaeology – US
Joel Clifton – Britain
Mai Thi Phan – Vietnam
‘What’s going on?’ Steve demanded, struggling against the suit. ‘Who are you?’
Kolya Zima walked over. He wrapped one hand around Pietro’s wrist, and the other around Wanda’s. Both of them suddenly froze and seemed to try to cry out, but no sound came out of their mouths. Steve struggled harder, but the suit Tony had used to hold him down didn’t budge.
Kolya let go and they slumped, panting for breath.
‘What did you do?’ Steve demanded.
‘Took their powers away,’ Kolya said. ‘Anyone who goes around using their powers to subdue and dominate those less powerful than themselves doesn’t deserve power.’
Steve gawked for a moment. ‘That’s not—’
‘We’ll talk later,’ Kolya said, pulling out two sets of handcuffs. ‘Now, I believe Sokovia would like these two for treason charges.’
Wanda screeched and started struggling.
‘Isn’t that the caveat on your powers?’ Tony asked, over the noise. ‘You abuse them, you lose them?’
‘Pretty much,’ Sharee Pertinicle said. She turned her head. ‘Hey, Mai, what’s his deal?’
Mai Thi Phan was looking at Steve. ‘It seems he wants to use the Maximoff twins as a precedent for Barnes. That’s why he keeps insisting they’re victims like him, despite the fact that they volunteered.’
Wait, what? Tony’s eyebrow flew up.
‘Well, Ethne did say he had an incredible ability to rationalise to try and get his way,’ Sharee remarked.
‘Rationalise?’ Thor asked.
‘Oh,’ Mai said. ‘In the context we mean it, you have an end goal and that’s your only motivation. But you need a reason to do the thing to get what you want. Rationalising is coming up with a, usually invented, reason to do this thing and get what you want.’ She frowned. ‘Sorry. I’m not explaining this well. Joel?’
‘In this case,’ Joel walked over to him, ‘Rogers wants his best friend back. The problem is that he was brainwashed for 70-plus years and in that time was sent to commit numerous political assassinations.’
‘It wasn’t Bucky!’ Steve yelled.
Joel ignored him. ‘Now, rather than do the logical thing and tell people about this, which would be rather more effective, he has decided that he alone has to save Barnes. Cause he’s his best friend or some rot. And to do that, he thinks he needs to show “reformed HYDRA” to pave the way for his friend. He’s hoping to turn the Maximoffs into that.’
Thor shook his head. ‘But they volunteered. They were not brainwashed.’
‘Which is where the rationalisation comes in.’ Joel nodded. ‘He found someone who could, theoretically, remove the Winter Soldier programming from Barnes. So he ignores everything that gets in the way of that and invents the scenario where they’re misguided children who were tricked by HYDRA.’
‘And that’s ignoring the fact that Barnes had his head screwed around with for seven decades.’ Sharee’s tone dripped with sarcasm. ‘Yes, Captain! Let’s screw around with it even more!’
‘That’s not...’ Steve tried.
‘Shut up!’ all four snapped.
Sharee sighed and pushed a hand through her hair. ‘Okay, so I’m going to portal to Sokovia. Kolya can take the twins. I’ll do another one. Joel, you take him. And then we’re gonna hash out the finer details of this thing.’
***
Bruce watched in something akin to horrified amusement as Steve was positively crucified by the media for continuing to support the Maximoff twins. The official reports on them made it clear they were both horribly unbalanced. People even had begun questioning if Steve himself was unbalanced, or if he’d been affected by Wanda.
Next to him, Rhodey huffed. ‘One or another.’
Bruce looked over. ‘Yeah, I’ve heard a lot of remarks about that.’
Rhodey grinned at him. ‘And you’re wondering?’
‘I’m wondering.’
With a sigh, Rhodey switched off the TV and sat back. ‘It’s actually pretty normal for people to decide Tony owes them for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s something Tony did or didn’t do. Sometimes, it’s completely unrelated to him. I’ve actually forgotten most of them because it happens so much. The only reason I remember Killian is because of the fire and the high treason. The Maximoffs will probably stand out in memory because of Cap trying to defend them.’
‘How many do you remember?’
‘Besides those two? Only two others. And both of them tried the whole “you got me pregnant, so now you have to marry me” thing.’
‘How does Tony respond to that?’ Bruce asked.
‘First by reminding people that it is the 21st century and the only thing he’s obligated to do if he did father the child is pay child support,’ Rhodey said. ‘And second by getting a DNA test done.’
So that was common too. ‘So why do these two stand out?’
‘It happened about the same time,’ Rhodey said. ‘They both had baby boys, born only two months apart, and they both tried to use that to trap Tony. Now we don’t know if they actually are Tony’s kids because of what the mothers did next. One of them threatened to kill her baby if Tony didn’t acquiesce to her demands.’
Bruce’s eyebrows flew up.
‘Yeah,’ Rhodey said. ‘Pepper called the police while Tony stalled her. The second one was caught when Tony asked the police to perform a wellness check due to the similarities between the two women. They found that she’d shoved the crying baby in a dark cupboard. He was severely malnourished by the time they got there. Both women are now sitting in prison with all parental rights terminated.’
‘And what about the kids?’ Bruce asked. ‘Were they Tony’s?’
Rhodey shrugged. ‘Tony never had that DNA test done. Instead, he gave them names and he looked around for suitable surrogate parents. What happened then...was weird.’
Bruce looked curious.
‘Linda Flynn had been married to an abusive man who flew into a rage while she was pregnant with their second child,’ Rhodey said. ‘She miscarried and he was arrested. As she began the process of divorcing him, Tony approached her, asking if she’d take one of the boys. She said yes. I guess Tony told her what happened to him. So, Phineas went to her. Meanwhile, Tony found a recently widowed man in England who had lost his own pregnant wife in a car accident and he was getting depressive. Tony’s very bizarre solution was to ask him to take in Ferb. I don’t know how but it worked. Lawrence Fletcher pulled himself up to look after the kid.’
Bruce chuckled and shook his head. ‘That is weird.’
‘I’m not even up to the weird bit,’ Rhodey said. ‘A few years later, Linda and Lawrence met, fell in love, and got married.’
Bruce eyebrows flew up. ‘So Phineas and Ferb definitively became brothers then?’
‘And they’re pretty tight from what I heard,’ Rhodey said.