2012-09-14 First Impressions

It’s been one of those days. Meetings haven’t gone well, Tony’s been in one of his ‘locking myself in my workshop, now go away and leave me alone’ moods… Pepper feels that a little carbohydrate-based therapy is VERY much due. So instead of eating the sensible salad she’d packed for herself for lunch, she walked down to La Ovejita to get one of their fruit and cream cheese filled croissants and a cup of tea. She’s just received her bit of self-indulgence (What? It’s got wheat! And eggs! And fruit! That’s nutrition!) and is stepping out of the bakery to head back to her office. She pauses a few steps from the door to sip at the cup of tea she purchased along with the pastry.

Outside La Ovejita there’s a conveniently-placed bench on the sidewalk for bystanders and passers-by to occupy. Sometimes people get their bagels and coffee and eat outside, enjoying the sunlight and peoplewatching. It’s more popular during the spring and fall, less popular during the sweltering summer: but here, right at the brink of autumn, it’s a very popular option.

Funny that the bench should be empty, save for a single man who sits there reading a newspaper. He’s dressed in business casual attire, Dockers and a good solid-color shirt, his palette of hues going more towards the earth-toned, and wears over it a faux WW2 leather bomber jacket that’s emblazoned with the logo of some rock and roll band, the ‘Howling Commandos’. The things fortysomething men will do to look cool. Well, at least he hasn’t resorted to Grecian Formula yet.

“Ms. Potts,” the fellow says without looking up from his paper. “My name is Nicholas Fury.” Still without looking at her, he reaches into his inner jacket pocket to remove a small leather wallet. He opens it up and sets it down on the bench beside him, the SHIELD badge clearly visible. “I was hoping you’d have some time?”

Ah. Err. Nicholas Fury. SHIELD.

Come to think of it, that ‘faux’ WW2 flight jacket does look awfully well-worn…

Pepper Potts blinks in surprise at someone seemingly randomly addressing her, but upon turning to look at the man she recognizes him at the very least from the information that JARVIS had gleaned about SHIELD, if not from other sources. She recovers quickly enough and transfers her tea cup to the hand that’s already holding the croissant, performing one of those feats of balance and hand coordination that seems common to busy career woman so that she can offer to shake Fury’s hand. “Mr. Fury. I have a little time, but not much.” As much as she tries to spare Tony having to deal with back to back meetings, she packs her own calendar to almost insane levels and today is no exception. “This isn’t about Agent Barton, is it?”

There’s always a fine balance to be struck when approaching a new contact. The impression made in the first thirty seconds will define how the contact views you for the rest of your life. Set yourself up as a dominant authority figure and good luck later down the road if you need to be a confidant or a friend. Set yourself up as someone who can be bossed around and you’ll spend the rest of your career dealing with the contact trying to yank your chain. Fury hasn’t been a field agent for many years now, but once upon a time he was the best in the business and he still remembers the old lessons. Don’t antagonize someone before you have to. The best displays of power are the ones that people perceive on their own without being beaten over the head with it. The iron hand is best hidden within a silk glove.

“Ms. Potts,” Fury says again, rising to his feet. After all, a lady is standing, and thus so should he. The newspaper is neatly folded up, tucked beneath his arm, and he removes his fedora. (If you’re born in 1916, you get to rock the fedora. It’s a rule.) Once he’s ‘made decent’, he accepts Pepper’s offered hand, shaking it firmly but not painfully.

“If it would be more convenient for you, ma’am, I’d be happy to talk with you on your way back to the office,” he continues. Once he lets go of Pepper’s hand he picks up his wallet, folds it to hide the badge, and returns it to his jacket pocket.

Pepper Potts redistributes the pastry and beverage in her hands, nodding in acceptance of the offer to talk while walking. Once Fury appears to be ready, she starts, setting a suitably sedate pace. She did in fact notice that he did not answer her question about Agent Barton, and it will be brought up again. Just not immediately. “So, what would you like to talk about, Mr. Fury?”

“Well, Mr. Barton’s what you expected me to start off with, so let’s go with that.” His voice is completely casual as he walks along beside her back towards Stark Tower. His eyes move heavenwards to look over the skyline, as if he were regarding an old friend who hasn’t changed in many years. There’s a kind of permanency to the Woolworth Building, to the Flatiron Building, to Stark Tower and everything else. The skyline never changes very much. People only last a few decades.

Okay, that’s not what she expected. But she can work with this. Pepper takes another sip of her tea to give herself a quick moment to think, then asks, “I’m afraid I might have been a bit brusque with him the first time he came by the office to speak with Mr. Stark. He didn’t mention that, did he?” She tries to make it sound like she’s a bit concerned that he might have complained about her. Well, a little, anyway.

Fury looks down at his wristwatch. “Fifty-eight seconds from ‘hello’ to bull$h!+. Nabad. You didn’t break a minute but you get points for trying, Ms. Potts. Now, just to tell you what both of us already know, I don’t have a SHIELD surveillance team follow you for a week, figure out your favorite bagel shop, and then have myself leave the Helicarrier, just because Mr. Barton’s nose is out of joint.” Then, parenthetically, “Frankly, if you put his nose out of joint I’ll buy you a fruitbasket, but let’s keep that between us.”

His pace with her is an easy thing. Her pace is ‘sedate’, and with his longer legs his pace is almost ‘zombie shambling’. Never mind that. “I think we both know why I’m here, Ms. Potts.”

Pepper Potts stares at Fury for a moment. Damn. Why does she suddenly feel like she just got busted lying to her dad about why she wanted to borrow the car? She mentally sets that thought aside and likewise doesn’t say anything about the fruit basket. She knows why he’s here? If he wanted to talk to someone about those … zombots? that Barton mentioned, why didn’t he go talk to Tony directly? She’s staying indoors after dark until this whatever is going on is dealt with. So, if that’s not what he’s referring to, then wh… oh. “The research I asked JARVIS to do?” Her eyebrows draw together slightly. Did she stumble over something she shouldn’t have? None of the information seemed in any way ‘sensitive’ to her.

He gives a faint, slight nod of his head, then looks on towards Stark Tower. “I figure I’ve got about another five minutes, Ms. Potts, before I’m going to cut into your lunch hour. You usually take twenty-two minutes of your half-hour: Tony always monologues five minutes longer than he should, and between that and your bathroom break, twenty-two minutes to yourself. I know how important those twenty-two minutes are. Sometimes it’s all that keeps us sane. So let’s not waste each other’s time, Ms. Potts, and let’s see if I can’t give you a little something to help make this a mutually beneficial meeting. What I just did there, Ms. Potts, is a schtick as old as the hills. I act like I know everything, I act like something’s gone wrong, and I give you all the leeway in the world to pre-emptively justify yourself. It’s a common interrogation technique. There are some really positive aspects to it. First, since I haven’t asked you any questions, everything you’ve revealed has been voluntary. Second, whatever you do reveal is entirely on your head, not mine. I didn’t ask questions, after all. Like I said, it’s straight out of interrogation 101. The trick’s as old as the hills. The reason why it’s as old as the hills is — because it works. Parents, teachers, cops and spies all rely on it. It works.”

He looks over towards her then, giving a polite smile. Polite, perhaps, with an option for friendliness. “Don’t beat yourself up over admitting you were behind JARVIS’s digging. Learn from it instead. Next time someone pulls that I-know-and-you-should-fess-up schtick on you, just look ‘em square in the eye and tell ‘em to either say goodnight or to grab your ass, because the dance is ending sooner’n they think. Well. Uh, I mean — that’s — it’s an old saying, and maybe best left in the past. But you know what I mean, right?”

Pepper Potts raises her eyebrows at that. She’s getting subtlety pointers from SHIELD Director Fury? Okay, that cinches it. Today is officially FUBAR. Though, when she thinks about he’s said, it IS valid advice. And for more than just interrogation-ish stuff. Though she is NOT sharing that ‘say good night or grab my ass’ bit with Tony. Knowing him, he’d try for both. And then she’d have to kick his ass for grabbing hers. “I do. Is that all you wished to speak with me about?”

“The JARVIS thing? Yeah. Call it proactive paranoia,” the Eternal Colonel answers her, his tone casual. There’s no hostility here, there’s no sense of him trying to ‘get her’ on some admission. “SHIELD gets a couple of hundred thousand hits a day from the search engines — that’s what our analytics folks tell us. A few hundred thousand scans from teenage kids with no clue of what they’re doing. A few hundred a day from moderately talented people. A couple a day from intelligence services that actually know what they’re doing. But it’s been at least six months since a semi-sapient artificial intelligence decided to trawl through our public web presence and use randomized data-mining algorithms to try and deduce some of what we weren’t publishing.” Then, almost as an afterthought — “Now, mind you, I don’t know what half those words mean. But my IT staff, they tell me it’s very freaky. When Stark Industries does something freaky to SHIELD, well. That brings me downtown to ask you, face to face, what’s going on. I figure that’s more friendly than if we just harbor dark suspicions about each other.”

Pepper Potts is quiet for a moment, not only trying to think of what to say, but trying to think of what to say WHILE remembering the man’s words from just a moment ago. “Who was the previous AI?” Yes, all of that, and she’s picked out that he mentioned JARVIS’s ‘trawling’ wasn’t the first time they’ve had an AI digging about their computer systems.

“Not something I’m going to talk about on a city street, Ms. Potts,” Fury answers matter-of-factly. “Nor to someone who doesn’t possess the necessary SHIELD clearances. But yeah, it’s happened before. Every nation on earth is developing network-warfare capabilities. Some of them better than others. The list of who it could possibly be is pretty long, from Ultron to MODOK to … you get the idea. These bad guys are out there and they watch us, and we try to watch them back. But this is distracting us from the real conversation, and I figure in about another minute I’m going to start cutting into your lunch hour. Which I really don’t want to do, Ms. Potts, I understand how packed your day is. What were you up to? Why did you send JARVIS out, what were you looking for?”

Pepper Potts stops then, to look at Director Fury directly. “I asked JARVIS to do that search because I wanted to know why Agent Barton insisted on speaking with Mr. Stark, and what he felt was sensitive enough to not share with me. Simply put, I didn’t appreciate him treating me as if I were some bubbleheaded receptionist that he could just flirt with and skate past. I made sure he realized I wouldn’t fall for that, and then I asked JARVIS to find out about SHIELD, because it was a name Mr. Stark had not shared with me before.” There, that last, THAT was truly why she had the AI go digging.

Fury listens to this intently. He stands like an old soldier — it’s something in the spine, really, a discipline that’s been adhered to for so long it’s become simply an automatic reflex. He holds eye contact, listens closely to what Pepper says, and perhaps most importantly, does not interrupt.

“Ms. Potts,” he says as he looks down at his wristwatch, but only once she’s done, “I think we’re about to cut into your lunch hour. I apologize for Mr. Barton’s behavior. I will speak with him about it, and you have my personal word he will be on better manners in the future. He should not have acted in such a manner. It’s unprofessional. Now, if you want to leave things at that and not lose any of your twenty-two minutes, I can’t blame you: I thank you for your time and wish you a pleasant day. If you want to know about SHIELD, though, I’d be happy to speak with you for a few minutes. Ma’am, my name is Colonel Nicholas Fury, United States Army (Retired), and I am SHIELD’s director. The top man.”

Pepper Potts looks surprised by Fury’s introducing himself again, but she covers it up rather quickly. “I do have some follow up questions, but none of them are pressing in any way and can certainly wait. Is there perhaps a phone number or email address where I can reach you at another time?”

A small, thin smile crosses Fury’s face. It’s the kind of thing that’s in some sense deeply inhuman: it’s the childlike joy of a career soldier who finds himself surrounded on all sides and rallies his troops by calling out, ‘They’re all around us and closing in, boys: no way will those sons of bitches escape us now!’ It’s a smile that few people in civilized society ever see: it’s a smile that announces that absolutely no one within line of sight is holding enough insurance.

“Tony’s an arrogant so-and-so, ain’t he?” he muses as he reaches into his inner coat pocket. This time, though, instead of fishing out his badge wallet, he withdraws a stainless steel business card holder. He opens it up and extracts a card, not from the front of the stack but the back. “My personal line,” he says as he hands it over to Pepper. “It will make me very angry if Tony gets his hands on it. And it will make Tony very, very irritated if he were to somehow find out that you can just call me up on the phone whenever you want and call me ‘Nick’. And frankly, I think Tony could use a little bit of a rattle to his cage. Don’t you?”

He holds the card out, waiting for her to take it — the symbolism being clear: that she should only take it if she’ll agree to not under any circumstances share it with Tony.

Pepper Potts stares at the card for a second, then actually shakes her head no and takes a tiny step back. “Whatever else Mr. Stark may be, he is my boss first and foremost. If I took that card and withheld information from him, it would be exactly the same as what he’d done to me. So I’m sorry, Director Fury, but no.”

This gets a laugh from Fury — and not a mocking or derisive one, either. An appreciative one, in fact: he sees something in this that perhaps most don’t. “You know, the samurai of feudal Japan had a riddle,” he says once the peals subside. “Which is the greater samurai? The one who serves a just, morally upright liege-lord, or the one who serves a corrupt and venal liege-lord? The answer is the second samurai is the greater one… because anyone can faithfully serve a nice guy.”

He stands there smiling, and for a moment the smile isn’t that of a man whose heart never came back from war. It’s that of a colonel who’s seeing a surprising amount of integrity in a junior troop. He looks away from her a moment later, replaces the card in the carrier, and extracts one from the front of the stack. “I’ve served some pretty awful liege-lords in my time, too, Ms. Potts. The United Nations might be the worst of them all. Ain’t many democracies there and a whole lot of tyrants. Trust me. I understand. Now, this card, ma’am, will get you to my secretary. No guarantees you’ll reach me… but I promise you, I will return your call. You don’t get my private line, Ms. Potts, but you do get my respect and my smile, and let me tell you, that’s even harder to get than my number.”

He looks up at Stark Tower, then looks back over at Pepper and her too-full hands with a cup of tea in one and a bag of lunch in the other. Rather than make her go through the food-juggling ritual, he simply tucks his business card into the top of her lunch bag, and gives her a polite nod. “Have a good day, Ms. Potts. It’s been a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Pepper Potts’s eyes get a bit flinty as Fury implies all kinds of things about Tony, including that he’s not a nice guy. She knows better, even if Tony’s public facade would seem to agree with the SHIELD director. So, rather than take the bait and try to refute his words, she simply smiles and nods once in acknowledgement of the card dropped into her lunch bag. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Director Fury. Hopefully we’ll speak again soon.” And then she turns and continues toward Stark Tower at a much more brisk pace than she’d set while they talked.