The kids and trolls were out of the room, and Fury didn’t have to restrain himself as he let out a string of curses. Then, he took a deep breath and turned to the others. “I’ve told the pilot to delay, but we’ve only got about twenty minutes to come up with a plan before their parents land on our heads.”

“Put Junior in a box for one thing,” Tony said. “Banner and I can get to work on a changeling detector and he can be the guinea pig.”

“We already have one method of detecting them.” Fury pointed out. The Gaggletack had been put in a box with a bunch of useless lights. Four security guards had already passed its test, and they would cycle the rest of the helicarrier’s complement through.

“A test that we have a troll and kid’s word for,” Tony said. “I’m not convinced.”

“Tony’s got a point,” Steve said. “All you’d have to do would be to sacrifice one changeling and then everyone would trust in it and let you pass agents through at will. Thor, what do you know about this?”

The Asgardian frowned. “The technique is not unknown to my people. I would trust the Gaggletack, for now.”

“And their allergy to sunlight?” Fury asked.

“That I could not tell you much about,” Thor replied. “Perhaps Heimdall or a scholar could. We are not the only workers of what you call magic.”

“Could we even detect them, short of testing everyone?” Natasha said. “If they’re right, and the kids are telling the truth as they know it, Changelings are literally inserted from infanthood. There’s no paper trail to track.”

“Yeah,” Clint agreed. “But if they live a long time and they do, there will have to be breaks in it—fake deaths and reinserting them into society. We can track that.”

“It’ll take time, but as soon as we verify that our IT staff are all human, they can get started crunching the data.” And hopefully, solve this. If Arcadia was the core of troll civilization, Fury had a bad idea that he might be dealing with idiots who saw it as a problem easily fixed for the cost of a single American city. An entire civilization would be raising all kinds of alarm.

Which meant that it would be best if they could present the higher-ups with a solved problem.

“Sir?”

Fury hit a stud. “What?”

“The kid, Lake? We sent them to a lounge like you ordered us and he’s using the kitchen. Is that…” Fury shook his head. Normally it’d be the kind of question that didn’t get to him, but given the amount of weirdness they’d been seeing, worrying that a kid would be able to whip up a doomsday muffin wasn’t something you could necessarily dismiss. But he had the kid’s measure. “It’s fine. Anything else?”

“The trolls would like more foil and forks.”

“Make certain they have it.”

“Which brings up another problem. What do we do with the kids?” Tony asked. “Beyond get that amulet off of Jim.”

“Do we have the right?” Thor asked. “It chose him, and they are all valiant warri—”

“No. Kids do not get to be valiant warriors. They get to worry about acne and first dates. Not Death.” Tony glared at Thor, not backing down in the slightest.

Fury remained silent. There was a highly classified psych survey that existed in only one copy, about Tony Stark. Stark wasn’t arguing with them. He was talking to Dr. Ho Yinsen and the shades of his family.

“That may be beyond our power,” Steve quietly said. “They’ve had to kill. All of them. They’ve faced death. You know that leaves a mark, Tony.”

“Yeah, and I’ll pay for their shrink.” Tony looked around. “But it doesn’t mean that they have to keep doing it.”

“An artifact like the amulet may very well be part of the workings of fate,” Thor quietly said. Tony snorted.

“And we may need their skills,” Bruce added, reluctantly, “If Jim is the only one who can open the Bridge, then he’ll be vital to any rescue mission, not to mention Claire and Toby.” He shrugged. “They work well together.”

“I—”

Steve cut Tony off. “Nobody is talking about letting them go in on their own, Tony, but trust me, having someone tell you you’re not good enough can do a lot of damage.”

“To say nothing that they’re likely to go behind our backs, or at least try,” Natasha said. “I think they’d be very willing to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.”

“I’ll get started working on the fetch,” Bruce said. Blinky had brought the tool with him, preferring to keep it on his person rather than in Trollmarket, and that said all sorts of things for the security situation down there, and it was sitting in a reinforced vault.

“Yeah…” Tony tapped his chin. “They said that Claire’s magic staff couldn’t get into the Darklands, but I wonder…”

“What?” Steve asked.

“Keys and keyholes, Captain, keys and keyholes.” He turned to Bruce. “Ready to science some magic?”

“I’m always ready for a non-violent challenge,” Bruce said.

“Good. We’ll collect the kids and I’ll let you deal with the parents.”

Fury snorted. Stark always loved to dump the hard work on someone else.

Jim cooked when he was nervous.

He was really cooking now, a second course forming under his hands. The SHIELD guards were being professional, but a couple of other crewmen had stopped and Jim had offered them some of the food.

“How did you do this?” one man asked. “The eggs never taste this good.”

“You can’t just put the spices on them after they’re done,” Jim said. “You’ve gotta mix them in.”

Claire smiled from where she was sitting, a crutch by her side and her ankle in a light-weight cast. She had bruises on her face and running over her arms, but then, so did Jim, except he’d been wearing armor. “You’ll never go wrong with Jim’s cooking.”

“Got that right,” Toby said. “Jim’s been cooking since I’ve known him.”

“Indeed, Master Jim was even able to create some recipes for the trolls,” Blinky supplied.

A guard looked at Jim. “Oh? How’d they taste?”

“I don’t know, but being that part of the mix was arsenic and battery acid…”

“Pass,” the guard said quickly.

Jim smiled. He liked cooking. He’d like to be cooking for Claire, with nobody in here so they could talk and cuddle a little, but he doubted that was going to happen.

Then the door shot open and Tony Stark and Bruce Banner came walking in. “So, Thor-light, when you’re finished cooking, wanna come down with Hamlet-Lass and Hammertime? Banner and I think we may have a way to get your kids out of the Darklands, without opening the door to an invasion.”

Jim finished the last course. “Done. If you guys want it, you can have it,” he told the guards.

“Dibs.”

“Good skill,” Mr. Stark said. “You want to be a professional cook?”

“I don’t know,” Jim said. “I learned to cook for mom, and I figured I should get good at it… But I don’t know.” He laughed. “Right now, my goals have changed. I just wanna survive to graduate.”

“We’re working on that.”

“What about Mr. Stricklander?” Claire asked.

“Nobody got close to our little fight,” Mr. Banner said. “We’re keeping watch but given what you said about his body guard and the binding spell with Jim’s mother, we don't want to risk tipping him off.”

“Oh.” Jim hunched over. Right. Mom’s coming.

“But Mr. Stark,” Claire said. “How can I help? The staff won’t get me into the darklands.”

“Indeed it will not,” Blinky said.

“But the fetch will,” Mr. Stark said. “Except that it’s too small a gate for an adult to fit through it. So tell me, how big a tunnel do you need to get from point a to point b with the staff?”

“I—what?” Claire asked.

“You can teleport through a wall, right? But you can’t get to the Darklands because there’s not way to breach the gap.”

“Yes.”

“And the fetch opens a hole between the two realities. Why can’t you just go through the hole?”

“I…” Claire fell silent.

“It can’t be that simple…” Jim breathed.

“You mean you could use the fetch and the staff to get into the darklands?” Toby grinned. “That’s awesome!”

“God, I feel stupid,” Claire moaned.

“That happens a lot to people who are around me,” Mr. Stark said.

“But it may not work,” Mr. Banner cautioned.

“Which is why we’re on our way to the lab. I hope you kids ate all you needed because you’re about to enjoy a Tony Stark/Bruce Banner marathon. “