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"If you don't back up I'm going to throw him in the trash."
"You wouldn't!" Clint sounds equal parts terrified and murderous which is definitely a feat.
"Never fear, the doctor is in," Tony says, waving Clint to the other side of the table so he can hover and fret as far from Tony as possible.
The source of Clint's worry is the sorry little pile Eduardo is currently making of himself, after he'd gone and tried to make Darcy's plushie Hulk his bitch. It hadn't worked out so well for him, what with being on the receiving end of that much voltage.
"You really have to have the no-means-no talk with him," Tony muses, unscrewing Eduardo's back panel and wincing at the blackened mess he finds inside.
"What's that face mean?" Clint demands.
"It means that Eduardo is not allowed to go near either Hulk anymore." Only two weeks previously, Eduardo had been buzzing around Bruce's head when he'd been letting the Other Guy out for a kind of stress release session. Hulk had smacked Eduardo into a wall so hard that it had taken Tony three days to bash him back into shape.
Admittedly, Eduardo was a lot more resilient than Tony had expected.
"Natasha keeps giving me pamphlets on responsible pet ownership and threatening to report me when Eduardo gets into her room."
"Wow, he really has absolutely no self-preservation instincts to speak of, does he?"
"It's not like I can take him to puppy preschool or anything," Clint continues to grumble.
"You could. That would be hilarious."
"I don't think that they would believe that a hovering robot is actually a dog breed."
"I'll disable his repulsors and we'll stick balls of wool on him. He can be the first robo-poodle."
"Just fix him," Clint pleads, looking anguished and Tony sighs and rolls his eyes.
"He'll be fine. It's mostly cosmetic damage. I gave him a lot of extra shielding inside after that thing with Doom."
"What thing with Doom?" Clint asks, narrowing his eyes and, oh yeah, Clint was totally not on that mission where they used Eduardo as bait for-
"Nothing. Nothing at all," Tony lies, knows that there is an arrow in a very uncomfortable place in his future if he doesn't distract Clint quickly. "Oh hey, look at that, welcome back to the land of the living." Tony smacks Eduardo's back panel into place and gives him a little shove.
It takes a minute, but Eduardo beeps, lets out a sorry-sounding Exterminate and heads for the crook of Clint's arm to hide himself pathetically.
"Aw, hi buddy," Clint says, the complete mushball.
"One robot, good as... well, almost good as new. He might develop an intention tremor or two if he keeps trying to have his wicked way with plushie Hulk."