"When the leader of the bad guys sang
Something soft and soaked in pain
I heard the echo from his secret hideaway" 
- Twenty One Pilots

  "Stark speaking."

  "Mr Stark ? I'm the Principal at Midtown High School, we met a few days ago."

  "Yes, I remember. Why are you calling ?"

  Deep inside him, Tony had a bad feeling. A call from the Principal when he's daughter had been gone for only two hours couldn't be good.

  "It seems that your daughter didn't show up at her second class, today. Neither at the third one, for that matter, which has just began."

  "What do you mean, my daughter's not in class ?"

  "I think your daughter has ran away, Mr Stark."

  "Tell me. Is there another student who's mysteriously missing ?"

  Tony was already putting on parts of his suit, telling everyone to come around.

  "Yes. It's..."

  "Peter Parker."

  "That's him. I was just about to call his aunt."

  "No kidding," he mumbled. "Thanks for letting me know, Sir."

  Tony ended the call without any more formalities. He only had to put on his helmet.

  "We have to get to the bunker," he told Steve, Natasha and Clint. "If  my hunch is right -and it often is- Harper and Peter are already there. Pepper, call May Parker and tell her not to worry about Peter's absence. We have everything under control."

  "Fine," she answered. "Tony !"

  She called him and ran to him before he left the house.

  "Bring her back."

  "I'll do whatever it takes, you know that."

  She nodded dramatically and tried to hide her anxiety when she saw Tony's expression. A few seconds later, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye were on their way to Ruffle Bar and they wouldn't let anything or anyone stop them.

***

  "Harper ? Harper, please, you have to get up," Peter begged.

  Harper, shot to the shoulder, was in agony. She gritted her teeth before trying to sit down.

  "You have to get the bullet out, Peter."

  "What ? I-"

  "Do it !"

  "But how ?"

  "Don't you have a pin or...I don't know, anything ? You need to get the bullet out so I can cauterise the wound. Please..."

  "Okay, okay."

  Peter was completely freaking out as he went through his backpack. No pin in sight, not even a simple chunk of metal that could look like one.

  "Never mind. Do it with your hand."

  "But it's..."

  "I don't care. C'me on !"

  "Okay. It might hurt so...brace yourself."

  And that's what she did when Peter slipped his finger in her wound. He felt the edge of the bullet getting even deeper under his finger. He took out his hand immediately.

  "Listen, Harper, it's too dangerous. I'm only gonna push it further."

  "Whatever," she mumbled. "I'll just walk it off."

  "Harper, you're not..."

  "I'm fine !" she interrupted him. "C'me on, we got other fish to fry."

  Harper ignored the pain (the adrenaline running through her body was helping a lot on that point) and led Peter to the entrance of the bunker, now clear of all protection. She looked for his approbation. He nodded slowly and they opened the door, ready to take on whoever would be standing there. Peter's webs were ready to be shot and Harper's arrows were ready to spear the flesh of her enemies. She gritted her teeth when she harnessed her bow and once it was in the right place, she knew there was no stopping them now. One by one, she took out men and women who stood on her path. Peter was doing well by himself and they were both alert to any danger, looking for the boss, the person behind all of this. Of course, they were standing out of the battle, hiding in the shadows. During a brief moment of calmness, Harper noticed that the bunker could fulfil many functions : science lab, technological lair... There was even something that looked vaguely like archives, in the corner of the room. What caught her attention was the row of seats : they looked like the ones where you could donate blood, except each of them was equipped with a weird-looking machine and tubes that scared the shit out of her. It was one second too much : one of the fighters knocked her out with a kick on her head.

***

  "It's here," Steve said when they came to the bunker. "Did the kids do that ?"

  "Looks like it," Tony answered as he looked at the bodies that were either fidgeting under webs or on the ground, or even the ones who weren't moving at all.

  The small team walked carefully to the entrance. They hadn't even taken a single step inside when they were greeted by a group of about twenty people aiming guns right at them.

  "Exactly the people I wanted to see !" gloated a woman's voice. "Iron Man... What a pleasure !"

  Tony lifted his gaze to look at the woman speaking. She looked about forty-five or fifty years old and she was standing on the upper floor, in front of what looked like a room that was completely isolated from the rest of the building. The woman looked familiar : he was convinced he knew her face but her eyes were her most disturbingly familiar feature. Yet the memory seemed to stay lost in the labyrinth that his brain was and despite all his efforts, he couldn't put a name on that face.

  "I can't say the feeling's mutual," he said, with a hint of hate in his voice. "Where is my daughter ?"

  "Oh, she's fine, don't worry. See by yourself."

  She opened the sliding door behind her and there were Harper and Peter, each of them tied to a chair and properly muzzled. When she saw her father, Harper's face it up instantly. She was full of hope again : she whined plaintively until that woman finally removed that awful piece of fabric that was blocking her voice. Still amused, the woman let her prisoner speak freely.

  "Dad !" she simply cried. "Don't listen to her, don' t do what she says, please..."

  "What did you tell her ?"

  "Not much. I told her I knew how much you loved her, that filthy kid, and how you'd do anything to get her back...safe and sound."

  "Dad, don't !"

  "What do you want ? Money ?" Tony asked, surprisingly cooperative.

  "No, not your damn money. I only want Stark Industries."

  "Why ? What use would it be ?"

  She didn't answer and looked at her nails disdainfully. Suddenly Tony remember : pictures, images, a name and a story, all at the same time. He cursed himself for not telling Harper about this. Had she known who was behind all of this, would she be here now ? Of course, Tony didn't think that the big boss would come to New York. When he last checked, she was supposed to be in Arizona, using a fake name.

  "I know who you are."

  "Of course you do. And once you give me Stark Industries, I'll leave it to die. Slowly," she explained with an evil grin. "And you'll watch it happen. You'll stare at your empire collapsing to the ground, everything you've built after your father, you'll what that die just like your father watched my own father die ! And then, that's the flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, right here, and I'll burn it right in front of you, and you'll watch that too !"

  She was yelling at this point : she snapped so hard that her eyes didn't express anything but total madness.

  "Your father ? But who are you ?" Steve asked.

  She slowly moved her hand to her forehead. She grabbed the base of her hair and took off the blond wig she'd been wearing thus far : red hair fell on her shoulders as she revealed her identity.

  "Mr Stark didn't tell you about me ?" she asked in the most innocent voice ever. "I'm a huge part of his life, you know. He wouldn't be a father if it weren't for me."

  "You are..."

  "Helen Grey. And I'm here to avenge my family."