Chapter 12: Phil?
"You're good on this end. The rest will be up to you." Tony tells me through my earpiece.
"You disconnected the transition lines? Are we off the grid?" I ask.
"StarkTower is about to be a beacon of self sustaining clean energy." He says proudly.
"Wow so maybe our arc reactor takes over and actually works?" I ask.
"I assume. Light her up." He tells me.
I switched up the power and switched on the 'STARK' sign to light up.
"How does it look?" I ask him wondering how our work have turned out.
"Like Christmas but with more... Me," he says.
This man is full of himself. I giggled a little.
"Gotta go wider on the public awareness campaign. You need to do some press. I can do some more tomorrow. I'm working on the zoning for the next billboard. And I-" he cuts me off from my rantings.
"Riley, you're killing me. Remember? Enjoy the moment." He reminds me.
"Get in here I for sure will," I said biting my lip.
I hear Tony land on the building.
"Sir, Agent Coulson of Shield is on the line," reports Jarvis.
Phil? Oh gosh, let's hope he's not here for another mission. I shook those thoughts away. I took off my earpiece.
"I'm not in. I'm actually out." Says Tony.
"Sir, I'm afraid he's insisting." Adds Jarvis.
"Cmon Jarvis, close the line. I got a date," says Tony.
I stare up at the monitors of the reactor device.
"Levels are holding steady." I tell him.
"Of course they are, I was directly involved. Which brings me to my next question, how does it feel to be a genius?" He asks with a smirk.
"I really, wouldn't know now, would I?" I ask him sarcastically.
If I can say, I'm actually considered a genius. I mean, I got my first 4 master degrees when I was only 15 years old.
"What do you mean? All this came from you." He says pointing at me.
"No. All this came from that," I point on the arc reactor on his chest.
"Give yourself some credit. Stark Tower is your baby. Give yourself... 12% of the credit." He tells me.
I let out a sneer as I turned my back against him and went to sit at the couch. He follows me.
"Twelve percent? My baby?" I ask.
"Well, I did do all the heavy lifting. Literally, I lifted the heavy things. And sorry, but the security snafu? That was on you." He says pointing at the elevator.
"I'm telling you, I'm almost finished with it." I said rolling my eyes playfully at him.
"My private elevator-" i cut him off.
"You mean OUR elevator?" I ask.
He continues, "was teaming with sweaty workmen." He informs me.
I pour myself and Tony's glass with champagne.
"I'll tell you what. Next building is going to say 'O'Conner' on the tower." He tell me.
"On the lease." I add.
"Call Phil, can you bunk over?" He asks making me giggle.
"He is down stairs and I can assure you, he'll find a way to get up here." I informed him.
He just shrugs.
"Sir, the telephone. I'm afraid my protocols are being over written." Jarvis informs.
"Riley, Stark we need to talk." I hear Phil from Tony's phone.
Tony picked it up and looked at Coulson.
"You have reched the real life model decoy of Tony Stark and Riley O'Conner, please leave a message." Says Tony.
I giggled and hit his arm.
"This is very urgent," adds Phil.
"Then leave it urgent," says Tony.
The elevator opens and Phil appears.
"Security breach! That's on you," says Tony pointing at me.
I rolled my eyes at him as I stood up from the couch.
"Phil! Good to see you! Come in," I said as we quickly hugged.
"Phil? His first name is Agent." Says Tony making me giggle.
"Come on in, we're celebrating." I offered.
"Which is why he can't stay." Says Tony giving him a fake smile.
"We need you to look this over. Soon as possible." Says Phil holding out a file towards Tony.
"I don't like being handed things," he says not taking the file.
"That's alright. I love being handed things. So let's switch," I said.
I pass my glass of champagne to Phil and takes the file from him, then I took my glass back and passed the file over to Tony.
"Official consultation hours are between 8 and 6 every other Thursday." Tony tells Phil as he walked to his desk, setting up the file which was actually a tablet sorta thing.
"This isn't a consultation." Says Phil.
I can tell there's something wrong, he looks pretty shaken. Phil turns to me.
"We need you to come back Riley. We were going to call you way earlier before all of it got out of control but Fury insisted." Phil informs me.
I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. I pointed at where Tony is.
"Is that about the Avengers? Which I probably should know nothing about." I ask.
"The Avengers Initiative was scrapped, I thought. And I didn't even qualify. But you did Riley." Tony butts in.
"I didn't know that," I muttered loudly.
I remember Fury talking to me about a group sort of rescue team but I never really payed attention to it.
"Yeah, apparently I'm volatile, self-obsessed, don't play well with others." Says Tony offended.
"That I did know," I say nodding my head.
"This isn't about personality profiles anymore." Says Phil.
"Whatever, Miss O'Conner, got a minute?" Asks Tony gesturing me over.
I walk over to Tony who placed the file into his own databases.
"You know I thought we were having a moment," he says looking at me.
"I was having 12% of the moment. This seems serious, Phil is pretty shaken." I tell him glancing quickly at Phil then back to Tony.
"How did you notice?" He asks.
"I've lived half of my life with the man. I know him." I tell him. I look at his file.
"What is all of this?" I ask him.
"This is-" he pressed on the file and flicked it in front of us.
Different profiles appear in holographic form in front of us. I see mine and Jake's profile and a scene of us in action. This has got to be serious if Fury is teaming up a bunch of us, he even got the Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Captain America, and Thor.
"I'm going to S.H.I.E.L.D base tonight," I told Tony looking at him seriously.
"Tomorrow," he says looking at me as well.
I shake my head.
"We've got homework. We've got a lot of homework."
"Well what if we didn't?" He asks.
"You mean when we are finished?" I ask with a smirk.
He nods. I brought my lip next to his ear and whispered something to his ear. Let's just say it was pretty dirty. I hear him gasp.
"Square deal. Be careful, alright?" He tells me.
I smiled, "always," I assured him.
I gave him a quick kiss on the lips which he returned and pulled away. I walked back to Phil, we got in the elevator.
"Let me guess, the Tesseract went out of control?" I ask him.
He nods his head, "A guy named Loki from Asgard used it to open a portal for himself to come here to Earth. He took the Tesseract with him and compromised Selvig, Barton, and Jake." He tells me.
I gasped.