After the War

Gorillas and panthers

Pepper

Before we took the jet back to Wakanda, Tony called me to ask me a question. "Tony? Why are you calling me?" "Do I need a reason to call my fiancée?" "You could just text me, if you call me it must be important." "You know me too well..." "So, what is it?" "I uh... I just thought of something. We're going to need as much brains as possible." "What?" "Remember Aldrich Killian?" "Unfortunately, I do." "Well... then you must remember when I crashed the suit and couldn't contact you with it and all that, you know, right before I rescued you?" "I seem to remember that it was me that saved your sorry ass." "True, not the point, but true. Anyway, the suit... there was this kid that helped me to... get it back "online" if you know what I mean." "And you want me to pick that kid up?" "His name is Harley." "Really?" "He's smart Pepper! We need as much brains as we can get. I know where he lives, but you're better at reasoning with people." "And that's why you need me to pick that kid up. So I can reason with his parents." "With his mom and him yeah." I sighed, "Fine, give me the address."

"He asked you to do what?" "To fetch this boy called Harley." "And, why?" "Cause he's smart Nat, that's why." "You sure it's not because he's used to having a "student" working under him now, you know, someone he tries his best to protect, which he did kinda fail at before..." "Nat!" "I know, it wasn't his fault, it was big purple ugly Thanos, but still, you think it's a good idea to drag another kid into this? We already have one highly emotional teenager walking around, and someone still needs to tell May what happened!" "How do you know May's name?" "Research." "Spies," I sighed. "Get used to it." "Nat, he needs this... I know it sounds weird, but... the thing is, Tony is weird." "I'm aware of that." "And he really needs this." "Fine," Natasha gave in, "fine, I'm gonna keep myself out of this." "Thank you." "But you tell Shuri about our detour." "I expected nothing less."

It was clear that Natasha thought it a bad plan to drag another kid into this. She was right of course, but... Tony really needed it. I don't know why, but he did. Shuri's reaction to the news was unexpected. She seemed to be happy about it. Probably because she wouldn't be the only teenager hanging around with a bunch of boring adults, although you could hardly call the Avengers boring. I guess it's just a teenager thing.

The boy in question, Harley Keener, was very surprised when the jet landed in front of his house. And he seemed to be even more surprised when he opened the door and I told him I had a message from Tony Stark. It took me some time, but I eventually convinced both him and his mother. His sister was skeptical, it seemed like she didn't want him to go. But he told her this: "Tony Stark needs me. I have to go, cause he helped me when I needed him. Remember the bullies? They stopped bothering me because of him. Now there are some very big bullies out there who're bothering him... I need to help him, okay? I promise I'll come back." She nodded, "Be careful." "I will be." He then hugged her, sighed, got up from the couch and faced me. "Alright, let's go."

Natasha

So, of course the kid was a tech nerd, like Stark himself and like his late intern, Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, what do you mean I'm not supposed to know that? So, Shuri was pretty happy to talk tech while I was flying the jet back to Wakanda.

"You still disapprove?" Pepper's voice sounded behind me. "Does this look like the face of approval?" I asked her as I turned on the auto pilot and turned around to face her. "Not really no." "There's your answer then." "I thought so." I sighed, "I just hope he'll prove useful... Tony is right, we need as many "brains" as we can get." "We do." "So now we have you, Tony, Bruce, Shuri and Harley." "I'm definitely not as smart as them." "You are pretty smart though." "So is Scott." "True." "And you're pretty good with computers." "I'm an expert hacker, doesn't make me that smart." "You hacked the War-Machine to give the controls back to Rhodey." "Like I said expert hacker." She rolled her eyes. "What?" "Expert, really?" I shrugged, "Part of my training." "Oh." "One of the good parts."