The Irony of it All

38

"Either of you want to tell us what is going on?!" Pepper yelled at Bruce and Tony. The two men were running from one side of Bruce's makeshift lab to the other, starting up machines and placing small vials of Clint's blood that they had taken just moments earlier. The machines whirred as they started up, another one beeped, the new sounds only adding to the chaos.
  
     "If whatever attacked Clint was injected with some form of the original Super Soldier serum," Bruce explained hurriedly as he ran around the room, taking measurements and typing in commands. "If we can find residual cells of the serum in Clint then…"

         "Then we might be able to save him." Tony finished.

         "Big if," Bruce clarified. "But it's the most we've had in almost two months."

          "How?" Laura asked.

          "If Clint has them, we can inject him with a substance that carries the Erskine Serum, creating a chemical reaction that might heal him."

         "So we need Cap's blood?" Happy asked.

          Bruce pushed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose. "Well the blood itself won't do anything and his body would probably reject it, but we can make a sort of antivenom with the properties inside Steve's blood and if my calculations are correct, that should work."

       The whirring stopped, and the machines beeped, letting everyone know that the testing was completed.

      "Friday? Stats please," Tony said and immediately a hologram formed with 3-D models of the data that the machines had collected.

        "Ha Ha!" Tony and Bruce laughed in unison, Tony clapping Bruce of the back. Laura ran over to their sides, quickly scanning over the information herself, followed by Happy and Pepper.

        "He has just enough of the serum inside of him for this to work!" Bruce exclaimed.

        They stood in silence for a few seconds, elation on all four faces. "So what happens now?" Happy asked, breaking the silence. Tony and Bruce's smiles dropped as they rubbed the back of their necks.

        "Well.."
        "Next?"
        "This part's a little complicated…"
         "Very complicated…"
          "What he said…"

          "Don't you need Cap's blood?" Happy offered.

           "Yes." Tony said firmly, snapping his fingers and pointing to Happy. They waited for him to continue, but he didn't.

           "Well…" Happy probed.

           "Oh we don't have any."

            The group groaned. "Well what were you planning to do after you got the positive test results?"

             "This was kind of the farthest we planned ahead. " Bruce admitted.

           "The bread package theory!" Tony said, snapping his fingers again.
 
            "Tony, no…" Bruce groaned.

             "Tony, yes." He responded with a cheesy grin before pulling out his phone and dialing.

             "What is the "Bread Package Theory"?" Laura whispered to Bruce.

         "It's just this stupid theory Tony has. I keep telling him it won't work but he's stuck on it."

          "What are the chances it will pan out?"

          He thought for a moment. There was a 47% chance that if the circumstances existed, it would pan out. The chances that the circumstances actually existed? "Roughly 14%," he finally said.

         "You owe me Derek!" Tony exclaimed into his phone, grabbing their attention. "Nonononono...dammit." He said as he finished the call. "Jerk hung up on me."

        "Who was that?" Pepper asked.

        "Head of Forensics at the FBI. I put in a request for the blood samples, or at the very least, their test results, found in Fine's hotel room. He turned me down immediately." He leaned his hands on the lab table in front of him, his foot tapping as he thought.

        "So what do we do now?" Laura questioned.
       
         "We could steal the sample." Tony said, thinking aloud.

           "Breaching the Sokovia Accords agreement like that will land us immediately in the Raft. And them in prison." Bruce pointed out.

           Tony returned to thought. He might not be able to break into the FBI, but someone else could. Someone with an unknown identity who hadn't signed the Accords.

           "I'll be back in a few hours," he stated, surprising the group as he suddenly left the lab. He had to go make a house call.

_____________________________________________

I know it's a short chapter, I'm sorry. I'll get the next one up as soon as I can. In the meantime, who do you think is going to be our guest of honor in the next chapter?
And thank you to @potterheadmeetsworld for your comment on Chapter 37!
-A.L. Rune

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