“If someone doesn’t want to work for you, let ‘em go. Saves everybody a lot of grief in the long run.”
“That’s… not a viewpoint I’ve heard often,” Bruce said thoughtfully.
Okay, Tony had to find something nasty to do to Ross. Maybe Midway needed an Army General kind-of sort-of all of a sudden? “Well, it’s something a lot of people ought to hear more,” Tony said firmly. “Especially people with eye-patches.”
Pepper was nodding agreement; then paused, giving Bruce a curious glance.
Heh. Can’t blame her, Tony thought. Because Bruce had a smile on his face. It was not a nice smile. At all.
“You’re right.” Bruce crossed his arms, a ghost of that smile still lingering on his face. “I suppose someone ought to drop Fury a note. From the look of that – it’s not just Yukari and Minato we need to worry about cornering.”
“Nope,” Tony said, matter-of-fact. Evil smile or no, Hulk wasn’t anywhere in sight. Which made him a little more worried, not less. But hey, Bruce had more than earned the right to be as sneakily evil as the next guy. He’d just remember to duck. “Between that and what we’ve got from the files, putting any of them with their backs to the wall is going to be a ticket to pain. And possibly random things set on fire. Or not-so-random ones. For which I cannot blame them. Uzume was a friend. And Higa made her go after Kagari? Everybody in the Sekirei Plan knew the stakes, if Higa or another user Ashikabi got his hands on them. They’re going to be running with rule number one as don’t get caught. Habits like that get carved bone-deep.”
Bruce winced, nodding.
Mentally, Tony rubbed his hands. This was going to be fun. “And this is why we need you to take front and center talking to Minato’s bunch.”
“…What?”
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
Okay, Tony had to find something nasty to do to Ross. Maybe Midway needed an Army General kind-of sort-of all of a sudden?
Maybe we can fed him to the Sekirei?
Many of them have views on people who don’t understand the phrase “No means no.”
Besides Kagari has been itching to justifiably sit someone on fire and Minaka has been staying frustratingly out of range.
“…What?”
Come on, Bruce, who knows better than you about being chased by people who think of you only as weapon or tool?
(Where is Kamiya Kaoru and her bokken when we need it?)
Through give some of the recent and not-so-recent trauma the Avengers have suffered, it would not surprise me if at some point in their interactions with one of the stronger Ashikabi like Minato that they make him wince. It wouldn’t be on purpose but some of our heroes are hurting and or have been hurt quite badly and that leaves marks – kinda of like how Jack keeps smacking Sanzo with his emotions in River of Stars . . .
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*G* Exactly! Bruce more than anyone ought to know what it takes to get past the ingrained terror and think, “Wait, maybe they’re serious about wanting my help.”
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And it’s a smart choice. Tony wouldn’t as he’s flamboyant and that would remind them of Minaka; Pepper as well but more because of Takami.
Which when you think about it makes Starrk Industries very similar to MBI in terms of the personalities of the people in charge, yes they are at different spectrums but at the first face-to-face meeting Minato and co. would apply prior experience to them.
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Eh, more like Minaka/Takami/MBI are a cheap ripoff of Tony/Pepper/SI – and/or the latter group is what the former would have been, if they’d actually been done properly instead of half-assed.
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Nah, they don’t deserve that– the SOB obviously has amazingly good PR, or someone else willing to lie like crazy for him, so you’d be setting up a bunch of “Japanese extremists” to kill a “highly decorated Army general sent to talk with them.”
Even though it’d be poetic!
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Didn’t think it was an actual viable solution. As it has been pointed out that SOB has to have something protecting him from getting in trouble for all of the things (because he done some stuff that really should have gotten him in trouble with the powers that be) . . . .
But the image is nice isn’t it?
If there is anyone besides Minaka in this ‘verse who needs to be on fire, in pieces, or in pieces on fire, General Ross has got to be high on the list.
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Mentally, Tony rubbed his hands.
Now, I have mental image of mad villian Tony Stark. In my head!
But overall, yeah, cornering someone with flight or die reflexes is bad idea. And knowing Fury… That gonna by something worth watching.
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Oooh, good thumbnail description– a not so evil Xanatos!
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…dang it. Now my bunnies are trying to put Xanatos and Furry in the same room and //breaking my brain// in the process. Oi.
(Bonus brain breakage for Xanatos bringing Puck to the meeting, and Furry bringing Black Widow.)
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I suspect that Fury won’t have too much of a mental leap to make when he gets the more complete information about the Sahashi siblings and what buttons to not push. The guy is in intelligence operative after all, he has no doubt run into people with similar triggers in the past and knows how not to set them off (well, unintentionally anyway).
He was simply acting on a combination of what information he had, assumptions based on said info (and let’s be fair, everybody makes assumptions about stuff and people constantly) and prodding the Avengers into dealing with the problem so he doesn’t have to deal with super-powered teenagers in love..
As for Xanatos, he’s less evil and more extremely ruthless and ambitious.
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Would Xanatos be True Neutral, Ordered Neutral, or Chaotic Neutral? Once you can nail him down, his word is solid, provided you have a really good lawyer close the loopholes…
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My gut says Chaotic, because man can he sow some mad chaos. *goes off to refresh alignment terminology*
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Good question. Would have to ponder.
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If you need to make agreements with Xanatos, better to not try and ‘nail him down’ as it were. Instead have a situation where you and he end up benefiting from the arrangement.
The guy doesn’t take kindly to people trying to force his hand/bend him over.
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At the start, he treats people as objects.
That’s evil.
He did get better, though.
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Tony Spark, mad scientist. Because he’d probably fit right in. The only thing scarier than him being a Spark, is if he wasn’t. And still managed to keep up.
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In one of the things the bunnies are lazily poking, Tony’s ancestors came from the now destroyed planet of the Sparks, moved to *mumble*, from which some of them moved to one of the American cognate planets. I need to get around to watching the MCU.
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*EG*
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If one assumes that Pepper is descended from the Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang movie Potts, she may also be slightly Sparky. (Novel Potts was WWII intelligence veteran, which is why I thought of Bond even before I remembered that Fleming wrote both.) “Why won’t someone please think of the children!”
Bunnies surfacing during this: 1) Next gen MCU 2) Strike the Blood/Seraph of the End 3) Faye from Grimnoir is great, and could be imported into the MCU or any Girl Genius setting with the right magic grafted on.
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There are some good Tony as accidental villain fics on AO3. 😉
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It really bothered me how in Civil War, Natasha and Tony, the 2 people closest to Bruce had problems initially working with Ross- the guy who hunted Bruce like an animal.
Really?
Not one word from Bruce’s Bro or kinda girlfriend?
Not even when Ross called him and Thor WMDs? Objects?
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*had no problems
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“That’s… not a viewpoint I’ve heard often,” Bruce said thoughtfully.
That’s because Tony’s flat out wrong. Forced labor is a great idea. It’s more efficient, you get better productivity, higher quality of work. It’s why following the Civil War, the US economy went into a depression from which it didn’t recover until FDR. The Southern slave economy was super productive, and had been generating the bulk of America’s wealth. The Romans could have had the industrial revolution at any point, but didn’t because they cared about the environment. It’s why the Soviet Union was the world leader in human happiness and technological development. The transistor, the shopping cart, the telegraph, Chicago deep dish Pizza, the traffic light and AIDS were all Soviet inventions stolen from them by the CIA. Have you ever seen the build quality on V-2 rockets? Slave labor is the envy of the free world.
tl; dr: It is entirely plausible for someone of academic background to be that sheltered about how the economy really works.
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And it’s not like he’s had many opportunities to stretch out, so to speak, and learn about the world outside academia and/or outside the military industrial complex’s bubble. Talk about finding a low stress job being mandatory…
Aaaaand now my brain is tossing out Hulk Pizza: We Smash Deliveries in 30 Minutes or Less!
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*laughs*
Well, I’m glad I re-read that… I thought you were being serious, since I did remember the “great panic of 18(mumblemumble)” and spent an agonizing ten minutes trying to politely phrase a response that wouldn’t drag everything crazy……
(I’m on vacation–with kids, which means I’m doing twice as much as usual! But everyone is happy!)
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Sorry for the pain.
While writing it, I was torn between ‘this is the internet, I need to label sarcasm’, and ‘I have put enough obvious clues in’. Finally I put in the Pizza, the telegraph, AIDS, and the Romans, and decided it was enough. I thought I’d accounted enough for Poe’s Law, and the range of modern and historic talking points.
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It is hard to account for “reader is halfway asleep”!
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