Work Text:
Steve could feel the heat of the bubbling cauldron beneath them. Or vat of acid? Steve squinted through the sting of the smoke, unsure. He made a mental note to recommend less ambiguity when he gave Tony feedback on his training simulator project. Whatever it was, the program was liable to simulate a very unpleasant experience if the tentacles coiled around him opened and let them fall. Next to him, Tony was in much the same predicament, a thoughtful look on his face. For the dozenth time since they started this exercise, Steve found himself wishing he'd insisted that Tony stay out of it, to have the emergency stop button in hand.
Because there were clearly still bugs to work out in the programming. And he was getting bored.
“So. Tell me you have a plan out of this and are planning to share,” Steve said as the simulator made a creaking noise. And Steve had to admire Tony's attention to detail: putting in the sound of rusty door hinges, even as Steve frowned at the introduction of a familiar, unwelcome figure. “You didn't tell me you put him into this.”
Tony opened his mouth to reply, but the Red Skull didn't give him a chance to finish, an ugly, triumphant look on his pug face.
“Ah, this is a glorious day,” he crowed. “With you two out of the way, there is little to stop me. This is a momentous stroke! The academy will fall at my hands in no time at all now.”
Steve rolled his eyes, tuning out the Skull. Hadn't he sat through these often enough? Did he really need to sit through another? “Monologing?” He shot Tony a sideways glance.
“I wanted authenticity,” Tony protested, before a stricken look flitted across his features. And that obviously wasn't right. Tony had endured this kind of tedium from megalomaniacs before. It was part of being a hero. It was even on the syllabus of Introductory Hazards and Safety for Superheroes.
Steve started listening to the Skull again.
His voice wasn't clipped and accented anymore. It was the eerie monotonous tone of a machine reading. “Change-log notes. In the event a training results in defeat, prompt for override password.”
The Skull stared up at them expectantly.
Tony flushed clear down his neck. “We aren't defeated yet.”
The Skull blinked. “Probability of escape calculated at two percent. Prompt for override password.”
“I can work with two percent,” Tony said hotly.
“There has been no change in user's situation for twenty minutes. Prompt for override password.”
Well that was embarrassing.
Twenty minutes? He was going to be late to class at this rate. Frankly, Steve was surprised Tony was being so stubborn. “What's the big deal, Tony?”
Tony ignored Steve, still addressing the Skull. “Look, you fancy toaster, you don't get to tell me when I'm—”
“Tony,” Steve said more forcefully. “I have to get to class in ten minutes.”
Tony's mouth screwed up, as though he was really not looking forward to what came next. “Fine. Computer. Override Steve Rogers is a hottie.”
“Override accepted.”
The boiling vat beneath them vanished, as did the impression of heat. The tentacles slid them to the floor and unwound, the scaly substance reforming into a smooth, metal machinery that folded away into part of the simulator's wall. Or it did mostly. Something became stuck and gave a pained metal shriek. Tony winced.
“D-did I just hear you right?” Steve stammered.
Tony bit the inside of his cheek and looked away, bending down to pry off an access panel. He tugged miserably at some of the metal machinery that had formed the tentacles, but whatever he was after was firmly stuck, and when it finally gave way he landed on his ass. He glanced up at Steve sullenly. “Why are you still here? I thought you had to go.”
He did. But Foundations of Secret Organizations 101 was a walk in the park, and he could always beg notes off of Bucky. And this—whatever this was that had just happened—might not be here when he came back. Steve smiled, offered a hand to Tony. “I think I can make an exception this once.”