The Girl Who Would Be Queen

Chapter 1

The team is gathered around the table ready for Tony to begin the meeting. He's standing in the front of the room toying with lines of code, seemingly distant for everyone else in the room.

"Hey Tony," Steve said, flailing his hands in the air. "Yahoo, Earth to Tony, you ready to get started?"

Tony looks up and for a moment looks startled by the fact the whole team entered the room without him noticing. Nevertheless, he nods his head and throws up a projection of a building onto the table. He opens his mouth to speak when a young woman enters the room. She has on a beige plaid pencil skirt that goes down to just above her knees and a black turtleneck and her hair is tied back into a low ponytail.

"Mr. Stark?" She asks hesitantly. If they were any other group of people, they could tell she'd normally be very confident.

"Um, does Pepper know about this, 'Mr. Stark'?" Sam jokes before being hit in the chest by Bucky.

"She's my new intern, Sam. Does everything have to be a joke with you?" Tony replies, rolling his eyes. "Team, this is Lyria Wilde. Lyria, I'm assuming you already know the team."

She nods silently, her eyes fixed on Tony as if it would make everyone else in the room disappear.

"Good. Um, you can start by taking a look at the fuel injectors for Mark 102. I've hit a wall in optimizing the fuel capacity in those lines. FRIDAY set up the projection model in the lab and show Lyria the way please."

"Of course, Mr. Stark," FRIDAY responds. Lines of orange light up on the floor leading Lyria to an area just outside the glass office the team is in.

Once he sees she's all set up, Tony nods to himself before returning to address the team.

"Okay, that ought to keep her occupied for a few hours... or months. You know the interns they send nowadays are brick walls. Anyway," he says with a wave of his hand. "The building in front of you is thought to contain a deadly pathogen known as Antirearical. It's similar to anthrax but its symptoms occur much more rapidly and currently we have no real cure against the strain."

"Who's behind its creation?" Steve asks.

"We don't know," answers Tony. "Evidence points back to two individuals, Fernandez Hopps or Carnella Rosa, but so far we haven't been able to nail down which. Both are in charge of big pharmaceutical companies and both have a lot of opinions about our dear friend the senator."

"Why are they bringing us in? I mean normally we fight aliens and robots, not drug runners," Nat asks. "Why isn't the CIA or FBI handling it?"

"You forgot wizards," Sam adds.

Ignoring Sam, Tony replies, "They're bringing us in because the other guys have failed utterly and now it's reached a level of global threat. We've been asked by the United Nations to engage the threat. Any other questions or can I get back to the plan?"

When no one speaks up, Tony returns to the projection. "So we've been able to reconstruct the building schematics based on old blueprints so it might not be exactly accurate but we do know a few things. Tower A houses the-"

"Mr. Stark, Ms. Wilde would like to speak to you," FRIDAY interrupts.

He turns around and sees Lyria is just sitting there with her head down. He storms out of the room, muttering about how useless interns are. The team follows after him worried about his temper with this young woman.

"What is so important that you had to interrupt my team's meeting?" He questions.

She sits up quickly and an embarrassed blush settles on her cheeks. "I'm sorry Mr. Stark. I just didn't know what to do-"