Man Out of Time - A Captain America / Avengers Fanfiction

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

"If a Middle Eastern terrorist flings a soccer ball containing a grenade into the Stark Industries cafeteria at lunchtime," Bernice read aloud. "And you were to kick it, where it would land and how far away you need to get to avoid getting fragged by exploding green Jello salad?"

"Who dreams up these examples?" Jacquie asked.

"Tony Stark himself, it's rumored," Bernice said with a sigh as she plugged the numbers which had been noted on the diagram into a Pythagorean theorem and began to proof her answer.

"If I wanted to do math," Jacquie laughed, "I wouldn't have gone to art school!"

Bernice stared at the stack of 'homework' and squelched the urge to say 'me either.'

After the second time Mr. Stark had summonsed her to doodle flights of fancy on a smart pad while he worked, he'd drilled her on how she could accurately recreate scale drawings without understanding the mathematics which underlay it. All her life Bernice had been able to bamboozle, charm, and otherwise dodge learning the tedious subject, relying on her ability to instinctively just know what something was supposed to look like to avoid doing the actual work of proving how her mind had leaped to those conclusions. Tony Stark, however, was too good at what he did to let her get away with it. He'd declared her paltry mathematics abilities to be 'utter and complete crap' and promptly sent her to the Mathematics for Dummies class he'd set up for any employee caught exhibiting deficits in the subject matter.

She was in good company there, with everyone from the janitor from inner Mongolia, Tony considering mathematics a more valuable language for the man to learn than to improve his faltering English, to the brand-new 'Director of Interplanetary Marketing' Pepper had just hired to explore selling Stark Industries products to alien cultures … if and when they found any that were friendly.

At least the class was more interesting than the boring formulae she'd been forced to drill in high school, with real-life weapons demonstrations and hands-on learning to back up their knowledge. Tony had a saying … 'math sticks better when you get to blow shit up.' Bernice thought of the 'salad shooter' they'd built out of PVC and ignition elements from an old gas grill, one of the more enjoyable lunchtimes she'd spent shooting cucumbers, heads of lettuce, and eggplants at a concrete wall in one of the shooting ranges in the basement. Next week, they were supposed build a working trebuchet. Mr. Stark, to her surprise, extended his belief that life should be fun to include his employees.

"Maybe it's time you swallowed your pride and called Mike," Jacquie said. "He keeps calling me, begging me to talk some sense into you."

"I don't want anything to do with him," Bernice said. "I thought you said he was an ass."

"He is an ass," Jacquie said, giving her a Machiavellian grin. "But he's an ass who's damned good in mathematics."

"Forget it," Bernice said. "If there's one thing I've learned from listening to Tony Stark, it's just how cutthroat the world really is."

"What does that have to do with Mike?" Jacquie said. "He said he was sorry. How much sorrier do you want him to be?"

Jacquie gestured towards a bouquet of roses which had arrived three days ago. Bernice had initially hoped they were from Steve Rogers, her heart dropping when she read the card signed 'Mike.' Steve had said he would call, but after a week with no telephone call, she was beginning to lose hope. She was resigned to another Saturday night spent with her three favorite people. Me. Myself. And I.

"It's not about how sorry Mike is," Bernice said, doodling a cartoon of a soccer ball flying into the Stark Industries salad bar and blowing Jello all over her coworkers. She added Doctor Nyi scooping a spoonful of the quivering mess off the bald head of one of her coworkers and eating it. Engineers viewed weapons demonstrations as a fun way to prove their egg-headed theories, something Tony Stark reminded them was not the case once their weapons left the laboratory for the real world.