Seeing Tony's face twist up like he'd swallowed a mouthful of dung, Madam President sighed. "Fine. I'll chip in five million too!"
At that, Tony finally felt a little better. "You don't need five million. A few hundred thousand would do it!"
"No. I insist on five million. The rest goes to improving their standard of living," Madam President said firmly.
"Suit yourself. You paying in diamonds, or U.S. bonds?" Tony asked.
Maya whipped the sniper rifle out from her hip and stuffed it into Tony's hands. "Neither. I'll settle the tab with the neural-pulse sniper rifle!"
"Holy— take this thing away, take it away! I'll pay, I'll pay!" Tony yelped in terror. "I've only got a mortal's wits—I can't comprehend your high-tech toys!"
"No. We agreed—your name, my money. No backing out now!" Madam President jammed the rifle down hard into the pocket of Tony's slacks.
"I misspoke—it's your money, your money, the money you left with me!"
Tch. You've got some nerve, Spider-Man—trying to blow off all three of my legs. That's just vicious.
---
While Madam President and Tony were conducting their friendly little negotiation, a Volvo sat parked at an intersection a short distance off. Inside it, a crew-cut Black man in his prime held a pair of binoculars, trained steadily on Tony's direction.
Ba-dump—the door thumped as a young man with a neat side part slid into the car and pulled it shut behind him. Where the crew-cut Black man wore a full leather jacket even in the heat, this young white man was standard-issue: black leather shoes, black slacks, white button-down—a fresh-faced, college-boy air about him.
The youth passed a paper bag across to the crew-cut man. "Boss, I brought you some pizza—want to try a slice?"
The crew-cut man kept his eyes on the two figures up on the bus's top deck, not looking up. "Coulson, we're agents. We're in the middle of an assignment. How can we go eating other people's food willy-nilly? What did they teach you at the Academy?"
Coulson took a bite of a fat burger and answered thickly around it, "Boss Fury, I didn't forget. I watched several people eat first, confirmed there was nothing wrong with it, and then I ate. Per S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy regulations, my conduct is fully within the safety guidelines."
"That still doesn't mean taking Tony Stark's food. I'm already a Level 9 agent—how could I accept Stark's charity? I'd sooner go hungry and thirsty, walk an extra 250 meters (820 feet) to the far end of the block and buy my own, than eat one crumb of Stark's bread!" Nick Fury said staunchly.
"Sss—what's that smell?" Fury caught a sudden whiff of something savory, set down the binoculars despite himself, grabbed the pizza bag, and took an enormous bite. "Mm—that smells incredible. Delicious. Damn it, isn't this Old Vincent's work, from Long Island?"
Coulson nodded and explained, "It is Vincent, from Long Island. Tony brought the whole family over—all three of them, father and sons. Even my burger was made by a five-star chef. Why else do you think I went through all that trouble to line up?"
"Damn it—what a screwed-up world!" Fury groused, tearing into the pizza between words. "Me, a Level 9 agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., countless commendations to my name for serving this country—and here I am driving a secondhand Volvo, eating street garbage, while that guy strikes a single pose and rains down a few hundred thousand dollars in cash! And now we've got to come out here in person to babysit his event and wipe his ass for him!"
"Ah, boss," Coulson said, "you're the anointed successor for Director—and yet Director Pierce sends you out to poke into the Spider-Man business. I know it doesn't sit right with you. But S.H.I.E.L.D.'s had nothing big lately, and Spider-Man already counts as a major case."
"For fuck's sake—I've been an agent for decades, and I need a wet-behind-the-ears kid to school me? Nothing big, really? That other matter—forget it, you're not cleared high enough, don't go meddling." And with that Fury waved a listless hand, signaling the subject closed.
Coulson had a vague sense of some of Fury's recent movements, but he also understood how tightly S.H.I.E.L.D. controlled its information. So he simply asked, "Then, boss—do you see anything off about Tony Stark?"
Fury curled his lip in contempt and gave a cold laugh. "I always knew Tony Stark wasn't the real Spider-Man. And now it's proven."
"How do you figure?" Coulson asked, curious.
"I'm over 300 meters—about a thousand feet—from Stark's bus. But I'm fluent in lip-reading, and I caught their entire conversation. The one with the Coca-Cola logo on his suit is the real Spider-Man. He sold the Spider-Man name to Stark—and right now they're negotiating how to house the mutant children."
Fury said it with perfect composure—and just like that, laid bare the shameful little shady deal between Madam President and Tony. You couldn't really fault Maya for carelessness; her sensing had been running the whole time. How could she have imagined someone reconstructing the gist of things from a few of Tony's words, read off his lips from hundreds of meters away?
After all, her sensing reached only 200 meters—660 feet—and she'd been wearing a mask, guarding against eavesdroppers and hidden cameras alike, and Tony had even pulled her into the corner of the bus roof on purpose. Under normal circumstances there was no way it would go wrong. Her only misfortune was running into the single strongest agent in the Marvel world.
Coulson mulled it over. "This Spider-Man is no simple case. He's not the hot-blooded, act-first type of superhero. He does good, but he understands his own position—and dragging Stark into it like this was actually pretty shrewd! Fury, we've got the situation straight now, and everything they've done has been in the name of justice. Should we wrap up the investigation and file the report?"
A sharp glint crossed Fury's eyes. He waved a hand. "Don't file yet. We'll keep watching them a while longer."
"Fury—what are you planning?" Coulson asked.
Fury thought it over. Coulson counted as one of his own, so he explained. "Coulson, understand this. To be the best agent alive, first: trust no one. Second: always have a card up your sleeve. There are things I can't say, but remember—S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't a single seamless block. And I'm about to take over as its Director. I'll need a few genuine elites of my own down the ranks. This Spider-Man—he's my target now."
---
Maya, for her part, had never dreamed S.H.I.E.L.D. would turn up here—and an "old acquaintance" at that, Marbled-Egg Head himself. (Author's note: the marbled-egg head isn't actually a marbled egg—go watch the Captain Marvel trailer, Fury's got a pretty thick head of hair.)—him and his flunky, Phil Coulson. She'd already settled everything with Tony, and now she huddled in the corner, watching Tony's improv show.
"Hey, everybody! Was I lying? Look—look—at these poor children! Yes, they're mutants, but they're also lawful citizens of America, minors, children! They've broken no laws. And even the destructive things some of them have done were done unintentionally—they can be forgiven, they can be rehabilitated!"
Feeling the tens of thousands of eyes fixed on the bus, Tony grew more impassioned still, and leapt clean up onto the tabletop, mic held high. "So I have decided—in the private name of the Stark family—to invest one million dollars in building a mutant youth shelter, in Jersey City, right across from Manhattan! Any reporter may come, at any time, at random, to monitor and spot-check how these young mutants are living. I have no use for hollow guarantees. I—Spider-Man, Tony Stark—deal in big things, good things, real things!"