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The Forge	By : IndigoMiko Category: Marvel Verse Movies > Iron Man (all) > Iron Man (all) Views: 1688 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Iron Man, X-Men, Avengers, or any other Marvel verse property. I also don't make any money from writing this. All I do is wile away my free time kicking things around inside my head. It's a mess up there.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Chapter 4: Super Cereal
“And this box is getting smaller. I’m trying to get out. How did I get so far from where I was?” New Low by Middle Class Rut
Well. This was extremely awkward.
“Happy, Four. Four, Happy.” Forge’s mind had the chance to ask huh? Before the man in the front of the vehicle replied.
“Nice to meet you, Four.”
Forge blinked at him as he pulled into the flow of traffic. “Is your name really Happy or does he nickname everyone?” She was a little indignant. Nicknames where her thing.
“Harold, ma’am, but you can call me Happy.”
So he was horning in on her bit.
The billionaire who’s car she had willingly gotten into, (and who does that even happen to besides hookers?) turned bright coffee colored eyes to her. “Nice to see you while sober Four.”
“It is nice to see you when you’re not pulling an Exorcist, or stalking me.,” Forge paused in thought. “Though I’m not sure this doesn’t count as some form of stalking. Also, I protest. You stole my nickname gig.” So she was extra sarcastic, it happened when she was nervous.
His eyes did that horrible sparkling thing that bespoke some coming doom. “I’m older than you, so technically you stole the nickname thing from me, and stalking?” Stark placed a hand across his chest dramatically. “I don’t stalk. I was conducting extensive background research.”
Forge gave an unimpressed look. “Whatever you want to call it dude.” Total stalker. And she was going to work for him? Again? Yeah. Maybe. What the hell was wrong with her? Oh right, she did stupid shit when she got angry, and she got angry when she got scared.
She had thought he might try to intimidate her, or be defensive. Considering the man had to know some of what she could do by now, that would have been understandable. Instead he had answered her questions, and though he hadn’t come right out and said it, he was basically going to harbor her. Forge figured he wanted something with her powers. That’s what usually happened.
“As interesting as a debate on methods of intelligence gathering with you would be,” Forge’s eyebrows jumped at his drop in tone. “We need to talk about more important things. SHIELD.” Oh, he had serious face now.
Forge examined the man next to her. Clean pressed and stylish, but with a certain posture about him. A man who had everything, but was attached to few things. Those things did not include individual opinion. She could respect that. Sucking in a breath Forge reaffirmed her decision that if she didn’t want to abandon another home for life on the road, again, he was her best option.
Damn Hay for making a reasonable argument.
Stark had an in with SHIELD. That was unexpected. She had a hard time imagining Iron Man, who was a hero, even if the man out of the suit was a drunken man whore, working with SHIELD. From her encounter with Agent Fischer she got a forced labor vibe from them. Maybe they had something on Stark?
“What about SHIELD?” she asked.
Stark shifted in his seat to angle towards her. “First, tell me what happened after the expo.”
Super cereal time. How much did she need to tell him? If he was really going to help her it was probably going to have to be a lot. Forge wasn‘t cool with opening up to people but she was hoping Stark could be Switzerland.
“After the expo I went home. Got back into the routine, but,” She hesitated here. How to explain that she couldn’t stop thinking about it? That she dreamed about not being able to move? She’d had a particularly bad dream about her legs not working, knowing the drones would explode and all the while trying to drag herself away with her arms. That dream even bled together with the one about the plastic box. Hay had been going nuts trying to get her to sleep.
Her shoulders shuddered. “Normal wouldn’t come.” It was raw and true and she hadn’t meant to say it.
The eyes of the man across from her, who was a superhero, were grim and understanding. Forge was smart. She’d done her homework. This was a man who’d seen corners. He‘d gotten out of his. She had to believe he could help her out of hers. Even if he did want to poke at her powers.
“I started jogging every day. I couldn’t not run.” She was rambling, so shook herself. “That’s not the point. While you were sending your delightful emails of deception I kept feeling like somebody was watching me.” Here she couched her words carefully. “I’ve had it happen before.” She shrugged a shoulder.
He blinked, and she could tell he was logging that bit of information somewhere in his genius brain. “You started looking?” He was still serious. Damn, she didn’t want to stretch herself. She believed in a firm amount of hours per day for adult thinking, otherwise things got tangled.
“It wasn’t hard. They were not the greatest. I got fed up. About a week ago I confronted creeper dude, thought I could get a measure of how deep the hole was. He got all official. There were threats.”
She hadn’t been prepared for the breadth of SHIELD. Smaller operations had come after her before. The Brotherhood amongst them. They had respected force. When they didn‘t she usually booked it. She had her shop now though. Hay, after he had reamed her out, had convinced her to appeal to the superhero who was blowing up her inbox.
Stark nodded his head, but looked thoughtful.
“I was stupid,” Forge admitted. She closed her eyes and locked her jaw in self recrimination. She‘d been stupid in a lot of ways. Something so basic as covering her damn face when she went and exposed her powers in an area she had known had security cameras. Security cameras whose footage the man across from her had no doubt looked at.
She could hear her Uncle‘s voice in her head from some past lecture over some past idiotic thing she‘d done. He‘d told her she had to stop leaping before she looked. Hay had sounded so much like him. “Confronting the guy was stupid. What I did at the expo was stupid.”
A hand settled on her forearm and Forge was startled that Stark would touch her. “No,” man his serious face could be intense. “What you did saved the lives of people at my expo. You didn’t do a damn thing wrong. Well,” he grinned a bit, “Besides not cover your face fast enough. Superhero’s always wear masks young lady,” he mock scolded.
“I’m a mechanic not a superhero,” she shot back. He grunted like he disagreed with her but she continued before he could speak. “Also, this is coming from the man who announced on national television that ‘I am Iron Man,’” she mocked him.
“Fair,” he agreed with a bob of his head.
There was a lingering silence between them before Forge admitted, “I’ve only fought with my powers twice before.”
Stark cracked a small smile, “You didn’t die. That’s a plus.”
Forge snorted in amusement. “Whatever. Creeper dude, he got me thinking, and I already knew you were, around,” She finished vaguely. Forge rubbed a hand across her face. Shit was complicated again. “Just, what am I dealing with?”
“Did creeper dude have a name?” Tony shot back.
Georgia bit her lip, “Agent Fischer.”
Stark‘s brow furrowed. He whipped out a phone and tapped something into it before replying. “That’s not a name I recognize from them, but they‘re a big agency. What I did recognize was the guy on your team you stuck up in a crane, presumably to watch out for me.” He sent her a teasing smirk.
Oh, she blushed. Damn him for the seat incident. “You deserved it.” She was unrepentant.
“Maybe,” He agreed. “But what you need to know is crane guy is called Agent Barton, and he works for SHIELD.”
Forge swallowed. Her greenhorn was SHIELD now? That didn’t fit either. “I saw him when the fighting was over. He’s the one that got me out of there before stuff started exploding. I didn‘t really get the ‘I will lock you in a lab and never let you out’ vibe from him.”
Something beeped on his phone and he tapped a few more things into it before looking back up. “JARVIS is currently searching SHIELD’s files for anything on an Agent Fischer. I already have Barton’s file. You can read it over when we get to the Expo, but you should know he wasn’t on assignment looking for you.”
“So, what? Happy accident he ran into me?” she frowned.
Stark smirked a bit. “Yeah. You kind of out-ed yourself. Whoops.”
Forge groaned and banged her head against the back of the seat. Whoops always whooped your ass.
……………………………….........................................................................
Forge had a headache.
The Chinese was spectacular. However, she had forgotten how much she disliked the little office boxes at the Expo, even when they were tricked out by Tony Stark. He’d gone off to do billionaire things, but before he’d left he’d warned her to stay inside and introduced her to JARVIS. She got it, press equaled video, equaled bad.
JARVIS was also spectacular, and Forge was pretty sure he was made of candy. Unfortunately no matter how often she asked him to call her Forge, or Georgia, or even Four, he continued to address her as Miss. Maddix. In retaliation she started to call him Mr. JARVIS. She wanted to call him Candyman but he wouldn’t answer to it.
In the three hours since she’d been plopped in front of the bank of computer screens, and left to eat her fortune cookies in peace, she’d been dutifully doing her homework. She was right. Agent Barton didn’t seem all that bad. SHIELD was huge, and scary, and sometimes didn’t take no for an answer. However there was no file for an Agent Fischer.
Forge wasn’t sure if that meant it was buried so deeply in SHIELD’s files that JARVIS hadn’t run across it yet. She wanted to ask, but didn’t want to offend the AI. Especially after he answered some questions about why Tony Stark was going out of his way to help her. It was apparent JARVIS thought she needed to know, and it said something about Stark that the AI hadn’t been programmed not to answer. It made her feel a little better when JARVIS told her Stark was interested in seeing what her powers could do.
Sometimes it felt like her whole life revolved around what she could do, and people trying to turn her into a science experiment, or use her as a weapon. Whatever. Stark was going to help her. Also he was paying her bank to work on his friend’s car. She could deal with some curiosity. Some. Plus she’d be able to leave when she was done, and not be locked in some secret lab in the tundra. JARVIS had personally assured her of that and she trusted the Candyman.
Besides she wasn’t a saint. She could admit to herself that a tiny part of her hoped to get her hands in the Iron Man armor. What? She was a mechanical engineer and that armor was a mad masterpiece. It made her fingers itch.
There was a beep from outside, because of course Tony Stark’s personal office box had all the electronic keys, before the door opened for said billionaire.
“Honey, I’m home.” He sashayed, (and she refused to call it anything but) into the room and dropped his suit coat over a chair.
Oh no, he was feeling feisty.
“Cute. You’re absolutely adorable,” she deadpanned.
“No, no,” he actually shook his finger, “Not cute, devastatingly handsome.”
“Whatever Captain C.” Forge rolled her eyes, “I have some things to talk to you about that require your adult brain switched on.”
He sat down in a chair next to her and made a show of giving her his full attention. When he spoke his voice was husky “I do so enjoy switching my adult brain on.”
“Somehow, I don’t think that happens as often as you think it does.” He pouted. “Anyway, three things. One, you said contract. I need to read and sign said contract.”
Stark nodded and took a moment to shuffle through files on one of the touch computer screens. He pulled up the contract and shot it through his monitor to hers. “And the others?”
“Two, you want to look at what I can do.” It was a statement. She wanted to see where he went with it.
He smiled what she figured he thought was his best charming smile. “Very much.”
Forge pulled a fancy metal paperweight, shaped like The Bean in Chicago, off the desk and held it up. “Demonstration?”
“Please.” His watched her hands with slightly wide eyes.
The bean went square, then flat. She held it up so he could see the thin piece of metal. It broke in two pieces and became two balls. She rotated them around each other two inches above her hands. Then she smashed them back together and, watching him very carefully, formed them into a blade. When he didn’t get aggressive, or show fear, she let the metal melt back into the bean and put it back on his desk.
“That,” he breathed, “was amazing.”
“Aren’t you frightened?”
His coffee colored eyes raised back up to hers. “Are you going to hurt me Four?”
“Not unless you hurt me first.”
“Then no.”
Decision made she took a deep breath, and narrowed her eyes. “No medical tests. No stamina tests. I give the okay on anything to do with my powers. I don’t like. I don’t do. I suspect something foul, I‘m gone. And,” she raised a finger, “I still have time to do the job you’re actually paying me for.”
Stark smiled. “Done.” Then he did that super serious face again. “But I’m not going to hurt you either Four.”
Time would tell, she knew, so she switched topics. “Three, JARVIS says there are no files for Agent Fischer.”
“Hmm, that doesn‘t sound right.”
Forge nodded her head because yeah, stealth agent was a serious issue.
“J?”
“Yes, sir?”
Stark typed a few things into the screen in front of him and frowned. “No progress on Agent Fischer?”
“I have breeched all secure files within SHIELD and there is no documentation of an Agent Fischer.” JARVIS replied. “There are, however, several agents who match the physical description Miss Maddix provided.”
A few files popped up in front of Stark and he turned towards Forge. “You didn’t happen to snap a picture of this guy did you?”
Forge wrinkled her nose. “No,” she hadn’t thought of it.
“Well, what about these guys?” He slid the pictures onto the screen in front of her.
JARVIS had already shown them to her but Forge took a moment to look them over again. “Nope. Not him.” She shook her head.
Stark hummed before he looked over at her again. “He told you he was SHIELD?”
“Yeah.” Forge remembered the day easily. “I walked up to him in a diner a block away from my shop. Told him I knew he was following me, and that if he knew the tiniest bit about me, he should consider how many screws were holding the booth behind him together.”
Stark whistled a bit at that.
“He said that he was Agent Fischer with Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division, and I should consider how SHIELD would take having one of their agents threatened. So yeah, SHIELD agent was definitely specified.”
The man across from her sucked on his top lip a bit. He abruptly leaned back in the seat, tapped his hands on his legs, and ordered, “J, keep looking.”
“Of course, sir.”
Stark pulled up another file on his screen and sent it over to hers. “You’ve already read this?”
Forge glanced at it, it was a SHIELD file on her, and nodded.
“You notice,” he pointed at her screen, “there’s nothing in there about approaching you.”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Well, technically, I approached him.”
“Same difference,” he cut in quickly. “There should be a note in your file about contact. This isn’t the first time I’ve hacked their system. I kept an eye on my own file while they were compiling it.”
Forge blinked at that. The man across from her had serious boundary issues. They were helping her out at this moment, but still.
“So either they’re keeping track of this on paper,” he seemed skeptical, “or Mr. Agent Fischer is a dirty, dirty liar.”
Forge met the eyes of the man across from her and furrowed her brow. “How do we find out?”
Stark gave her a grin and reached in front of her to tap her screen, bringing the contract of employment she was to sign back up. “First,” he gestured, “you sign.”
Sitting like that, leaned toward her with his palm raised in a beckoning manner and that smirk on his lips, Forge couldn’t help but blurt out, “Are you the Devil?”
Tony Stark laughed with that horrible twinkle in his eyes. “I am far more attractive.”
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The Forge