Astrid easily finished off the bottle with minimal shuddering this time around, smiling as she leaned back with a relaxed posture. “That's actually rather difficult.” She crinkled her nose gently. She wasn't about to lie to him but she could certainly omit some of the truth. “Hell's Kitchen, initially. My father is quite an exploring man. I'd been to every country at least once by the time I was eighteen. I frequent the UK, Colombia, and New York most often. And Brazil! Oh, I love Brazil.” She smiled and set down the empty bottle before tilting her head up and eyeing the Captain, assessing him and attempting to determine what questions he would ask. 

He was clearly not the prying type so she knew not to expect anything personal. The fact that he hadn't expressed any trepidation, discomfort, or doubt in her abilities let her know that he trusted Nick to set him up with a skilled agent. Still, it was a good idea to know at least a little something about your partner's field tactics and abilities. It helped a great deal with planning and working together. “I'm also really flexible on the field. My enemies call me 'Bullseye' sometimes. Because I never miss a shot. I'm a ninth degree black belt in six different forms of martial arts and I'm a former Women's Golden Glove champion. And I'm pretty handy with computers. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

She was more comfortable heavily playing down her skills when she worked with other people, especially her strength. She didn't like people knowing too much about her and letting them live. No enemy ever lived after witnessing her abilities. She couldn't trust other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents or the organisation's mercs because they tended to gossip. She was infamous for being more mysterious than their beloved one-eyed Director and she intended to keep herself shrouded in that curtain of enigmas. The rumors about her that floated around combined with the very few agents who actually saw her suggested that she was merely a legend, some urban myth conjured up by senior agents to jostle those fresh behind the badge. She had learned from the best, Fury and Romanova, transcending them both and become a ghost; Or an angel, as the most popular story of her suggested. 

She wondered if the Captain had heard those stories yet. She remembered hearing one of those tales for the first time, lurking about in the shadows of the rafters of one of their facilities while many agents lounged about on break. 

[I]High above the polished black floors of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s base in Baton Rouge, Lousiana – The Warren – was a young woman hanging upside down, using her legs to hold onto the beam. She went unnoticed, invisible as she enjoyed a rousing game of online Scrabble through her phone. She craned her head as the sound of laughter reached her ears. Bright green eyes peered down at a group of seven agents sitting on and around a desk with lunches and coffee in hand. “I'm dead serious. A fucking angel saved us. Roman, you were there! Tell 'em!” A male rookie agent that looked no older than twenty-five, fresh out of their Communications Academy,  spoke in an insisting tone and gestured to an older, seasoned agent. Agent Roman gave a nod, her brown hair peppered with silver strands giving a light sway. “I'd be laughing too if I wasn't there. We were supposed to be retrieving stolen files from some pissant terrorist cell in Bangladesh. But our informant double crossed us at the last minute. Fuckers got their hands on a lot of weapons real fast. They trashed our jet and it wasn't like we could speed out of there. Too many villages nearby with a lot of innocents. We called for an extraction but it would have taken two hours and we didn't have that long. We were stuck between a rock and a hard place.” The woman above was listening intently now, a smile flickering across her face as the other agents listened with serious expressions. 

“Tacum and I were cornered in the northwest quadrant of the compound and they were about to kill me and take him prisoner. I hear the rookie praying for the Valkyrie of S.H.I.E.L.D. to save us and I had to laugh a little. I mean, up until moments later I thought that was just something Fury made up and circulated around the academies and that anyone who said they'd seen her were just hallucinating. But there was this... This really bright flash of light and gunfire. When we could see again there was a girl standing there. Didn't look much older than fifteen or sixteen. Gorgeous girl with gold curls so long that it'd probably make Rapunzel want to chop her locks. She had this really huge, magnificent wings that were spread out. Bullets were just crumpling against 'em like in that Superman movie where the bullet hit his eye and got crushed. She had this shield and sword and she just started slashing. There was like this bubble that formed around me and Tacum, bullets just bouncing off it. Roots were shooting up out of the ground and strangling the guys and she was tossing them like they were just pebbles, sent a few guys a hundred yards a way and took out some walls. And before we knew it, it was over. She turned around and she was covered in blood.”

Everyone was on the edge of their seats now, some with wide eyes and dropped jaws. Agent Roman paused, shaking her head as if she didn't believe it herself still, debating whether or not it was just a dream. “Covered in blood and she had... She had this glow that came from inside her. Her eyes, her hair, her skin. Like she had just ate a rainbow; I wondered if she shit glitter too. And, this girl. Her sword and shield disappeared and she just smiled, the most wonderful smile. After it all, after destroying a small and heavily armed army in less than five minutes, this little girl, she still looked so innocent. Not even in a creepy way. She told us to go ahead and get out of there while she cleaned up the scene. The bubble just faded and we took off. I looked back and watched her shoot... Beams of light from her hands, disintegrating bodies into ash.” She finished with a whisper that was followed by a tense silence. The agents weren't sure whether or not to believe her but they doubted that Roman, of all people, would make up such a tale. She was a no-nonsense woman and didn't even have a sense of humor. Above, the young woman gave a soft giggle that reached their ears. They jumped and looked around for the sound that seemed to come from nowhere, leaving with an ethereal echo before they departed quickly.[/i]

There were many tales about her but nobody knew it was her per se. Those whom she had saved never saw her face again as she simply became a faceless, nameless mercenary working strangely close to the Director. She enjoyed the fun and complexity of it all. For a woman so in love with acting it was a dream come true that she could be anyone she wanted to be whenever she wanted to be. 

[center][b]{ x x x x x x x x x x }[/b][/center]

When she finally came to and began shouting, Tony essentially ignored her. He continued inspecting her items before giving a soft laugh. “Oh, that's how you think this works? You can steal my stuff but I can't [i]look[/i] at yours? Wow – That's a real nice fantasy world you live in.” He put her stuff down nevertheless and turned towards her and approached her. “But let me tell you how the real world works. You steal shit and you go to jail. You steal millions of dollars worth of military grade weaponry and equipment and materials from a lab specializing in making stuff to kill people and you go to prison. For the rest of your life.” He pulled up a chair and sat across from her, crossing one leg over the other, the helmet of his suit making no sound as it began to collapse and tuck itself into the neck area of his suit, revealing his face. 

“You use those millions of dollars worth of military grade weaponry and equipment and materials to build a knock off Iron Man suit with no license or registration for possession or operation of the stolen equipment or weapons... Well, you get put down as a terrorist and will likely be killed after a lengthy process of interrogation and torture that ignores the Geneva Convention codes. Our government doesn't play nice with terrorists. For all we know, you could be HYDRA. See, I could turn you in and that could happen. You'll probably get lucky and get to live. HYDRA's all up in the government and they might like your nifty little talent of yours, offer you a job and a chance to live. Then you'll live every day with a target painted on the back of your head because I never forget a face. But you could be a good person – which I doubt at this point – and turn them down. And then they'll kill you. Or brainwash you and force you to work for them. I heard they do that. Then you'll live every day after that working for them with cyanide capsule embedded in your cheek bone, forced to kill yourself if ever in a compromising situation.”

He let it all sink in, tinkering with the forearm part of his suit, his left arm lifting a bit. A holographic scene was projected from it that presented her face along with a slew of information. “You don't seem to have any terrorist ties. You seem more like a Plain Jane. But HYDRA's good at blending in. The only reason I know you're [i]not[/i] HYDRA is because of that shitty suit. Honestly, I don't give a damn who you are. What I do know is that some random person has been stealing my shit, attacking my employees, ripping off my tech, and thinks they can get away with it. You heard of Justin Hammer of Hammer Industries? Ivan Vanko, maybe? They tried to do what you're doing. Vanko's dead and Hammer will never see the light of day again.”

He lowered his arm and leaned towards her, tilting his head. He squinted his eyes some before giving a nod. “Maybe I've got you pegged wrong though. Maybe you're not a terrorist. Maybe you're just a smart girl looking to be a hero. Saw me down in a time of weakness and decided to strike and upstage me. You're not doing a good job at hiding the hate in your eyes or your tone. So, let me take a shot.” He stood up and paced around her in a circle, maintaining his casual tone. “You don't like rich people. Particularly me. The fact that you're stealing from me rather than working with scrap shows that much. Taking a shot at the fat cat, hm? I didn't have all this when I built my first suit. I literally built it from semi rusted steel and iron with leftover parts from random guns using a toolkit you can get from any auto store for ten bucks and a blowtorch. You seem smart enough that you could do the same.” He paused to lift a leg and put it on the seat of his chair in a semi Captain Morgan pose, elbow on knee and chin resting against his fist. “Because you seem to hate me so much – which shows very poor character since you don't even know me – you revel in the fact that I'm beaten down and rendered incapable of performing my Iron Man duties.” 

He moved again, now standing in front of her with a straight face, looking directly into her eyes. “Your seething hatred for me allows you to believe that I'm just being lazy. That I'm somehow less of a hero because I have flaws like everyone else. You decide that you think you can do a better job and start attacking my guards and stealing my stuff, ripping off my Iron Man. You've probably stopped a few muggers, rapists, burglars, and thugs. Think you're the shit and doing a better job, right? When's the last time you had to defend the Earth against an army of over two million aliens with technology years, maybe centuries, ahead of what we're capable of lead by a two thousand year old god with magic and tech that managed to kill nearly a hundred people in three days and almost sank New York City into the sea with only five people fighting at your side? When's the last time you watched someone you love sit in a coma because he was trying to help you fight the bad guys? When's the last time you stopped a nuclear missile from destroying a city and killing millions? Have you stared death in the face?”

His tone was more grave now as he gripped the arms of the chair, his face close to hers with a fire in his eyes. “I have saved countless lives, brought medicine and security to hundreds of small villages terrorized by local military terrorists, dropped billions of dollars into damn near every charity I could possibly find, and put terrorists behind bars. I'm a superhero. It's what the fuck I do. But I'm a human, too. In case you might have thought otherwise. I don't have inexhaustible energy to spend every hour of my life wide awake stopping every terrorist and getting every cat out of a tree for girl scouts and little old ladies. I have watched my lifelong best friend sit in a coma for nearly a month after being nearly blown up by a man who had beef with me. I've watched my fiance nearly die on several occasions before she fucked me over and left me. I've watched people die because I'm not perfect and invincible and I couldn't save them. I have fucking nightmares and panic attacks when I'm not drunk off my ass and buried balls deep in some faceless broad. I see all the people that died because I wasn't fast enough to save them, because I got there too late. I see aliens bumrushing men, women, and children and slaughtering them like sheep. I still see an entire armada of Chitauri waiting to conquer earth, I still feel the breath leaving my body after going through a wormhole.” 

He stepped back and his voice began to raise as anger seeped in and he began to lose control. “Excuse the fuck out of me for not being prepared to find out that gods exist! That magic exists! Forgive me, little thief, for not being prepared, for fearing what else is out there and wondering whether or not we can match it! Asgard exists and there's an entire planet of Chitauri out there! I don't know what else is out there! This world doesn't have the means to know what's out there and who's coming next! We don't know if we can handle the next threat that comes this way!” He was absolutely seething now as he glared at Amelia. “You think you're better than me? You think I'm a shitty hero because I have some issues? Where the fuck were you when Loki and the Chitauri attacked? I don't remember seeing you out there with us, shedding blood and taking hits to protect the world. Where were you when The Mandarin was blowing people up? I don't remember hearing about you trying to track him down to take him down. Do you actually give a shit about people or are you just doing this to spite me because of groundless hatred? Why wait until [i]I[/i] was down?”

He was smirking now, a wry look of smugness in his expression. “There are... police officers, fire fighters, the Army, the Marines, the Navy, the Air Force, S.H.I.E.L.D., and five other Avengers out there busting their asses to take down HYDRA any every other enemy of peace. So why target me? Why wait until [i]I[/i] was knocked down to swoop in and try to be a hero? You want the limelight? You want the chance to make me look bad, make me look inferior?” He gave a dark chuckle as he shook his head. “Nice try, sister. But that ain't gonna happen. Because you're generally what's called a vigilante. But you're not just a vigilante. You're running around with weapons and technology stolen from [i]me[/i] doling out justice where you see fit. You're a wild card and a nameless face that nobody knows. The difference between you and me when I first put on my suit? I had the proper requirements. I didn't steal my shit. I didn't hide who I was or what I was about. Being so secretive is doing you no favors. And, unlike me, you don't have money or lawyers to save you when the law comes down because they can't trust some waitress from the Bronx with stolen military weapons thinking that she knows what's best instead of leaving it to the professionals. You really think the public's going to accept you as this new Iron Woman superhero you're trying to pull off? To them you'll just be a wannabe and a fraud with no original ideas. And the press will have a field day when they find out you've been stealing from me. You'll be lumped in with the likes of Ivan and Justin. You'll need to upgrade to keep up if you're trying to be a hero. And you can't afford it. You think anyone's going to support you, sponsor you, want anything to do with you? You'd just be the bitch trying to rip off Tony Stark. I could sue you for intellectual theft like I've done to every other person stealing from me. You cannot win this.”

He took a step back now and crossed his arms over his chest with a frown on his face. “So, all that remains is to decide what to do with you... I could sue and press charges and let the government or HYDRA or even S.H.I.E.L.D. deal with you. Ninety-nine percent chance of that leaving you dead. Or I could just let you go and publicly announce that I caught the dubious thief but not sue or press charges. You would be a pariah and would probably lose your job. Nobody would hire you. And HYDRA would find you... Or you could work off your debt working for me since you're so greedy to fuck with my shit.”