#⭐tony stark || we create our own demons [v. paranormal]

[starsinshadows]

knowseverythingaboutyou​:

“So what’s he call himself, lucky?” She wasn’t sure that she fully believed Murdock — whichever one he was, Natasha hadn’t finished introducing her to the whole team — but hey, whatever got the job done. And if he was that good, hopefully they could get this all sorted out before Maria had to move. Or have an exorcism. Considering she was still a little on the fence about the house being haunted, that seemed extreme. The ultimate last resort.

“I’m not sure that I’m in the market to show off my house for a party, but.” Maria shrugged. Tony wasn’t wrong about the gothic vibes. Every once in awhile, she got the urge to grab her most Wednesday Addams outfit and wander around with a candle in the middle of the night. She never did it, of course — there wasn’t much chance of anyone seeing in the first place. Her neighbours were home about as often as she was, and they weren’t exactly the most observant. Probably for the best tonight. She wasn’t sure how to explain this group to the older couple. “I appreciate the spin. Maybe you can use it for one of your,” she waved her hand around. “Launches? Premieres?” She didn’t get much use out of it, and it did have that massive dining room. Perfect for parties.

“Huh.” Maria wondered if she should be playing more or less phones games than she currently was. Well, it wasn’t like the money went to her, just the developers of the games. It was probably better for her time management that she didn’t. “Science is a game, don’t you think? Just a different one than… you know, an actual board game.” How would Tony do at Candyland? She’d have to ask Nat. If anyone knew, it would be her. “So it’s for the chance for fame if you can prove that it’s all real?” Maria asked, teasing him. It was obvious that he really did want to help people, but the joke was right there after he talked about how much phone games were worth.

“Was kind of hoping that Natasha was yanking my leg when she said that I’d be going around with you.” Maria sighed, letting Tony fit her with the weird camera rig. She’d argue, but Nat would probably pack everyone up and leave. And now that Maria had the team there, she wasn’t sure that she wanted them to go before they did their investigation. Even though she didn’t really believe in ghosts. “It’s not going to be Barnes, is it? I only ask because if it’s following me and he attracts them, well —” she shrugged. “Hundred percent chance you get something but also that we might be hit in the head by something.”

Barnes’ ability to get pissed off ghosts to track him down was apparently as legendary as Natasha and Clint had made it seem. “Should I be offended that you’re calling my house old and creepy?” She poked at the camera bits still scattered on the table. “And you’ll be doing your whole Q gig from here, I assume, or can we call you part of the buddy system?”

    The shrug he gave Maria at her question about Murdock would hopefully get the idea across that he really had no clue whatsoever what Murdock considered it because the guy was great at evasion and it was hard to get him alone long enough to get any real answers out of him. That, and Tony had been determined to just figure it out and then confront the guy once he had facts to back it up. Right then, it was just a lot of suspicions and questions that he wasn’t given answers to when he’d asked before.     “I’ll let Rogers know you’re open to showing off the house as long as you’re not the one who has to show anything off,” he paraphrased for her, since that was absolutely what he got from her answer and who knew? Maria was a friend of Romanoff’s, so maybe they’d want to do something here. “Depends on the science. This is more of a game to me right now, but if it makes people feel better that we come in and bang around in their houses, then I’m willing. If I somehow get something conclusive enough to change everyone’s minds about how real it is, even better. You're not really talking anyone out of partnering you with Barnes, either, when you put it like that."     Confirmation that she was, indeed, partnered with the guy who pissed spirits off just by walking in the door? Perhaps. "You'll be fine. If he's there, whatever weird shit you've got in here won't care about you as much," he reassured, as much as that could be considered reassuring. Bucky hadn't arrived yet, but he tended not to do set-up in case he pissed something off before they had equipment to catch it. They'd learned their lesson, and Tony was still trying to figure that problem out, as well.     "I'm staying here where I can watch everything, which makes me everyone's buddy," he pointed out, smirking a little at that. He'd go if Rogers really needed it, but the last few times, he hadn't gotten anything and he'd had to be called back to the tech center anyway because equipment was acting funny. Maybe someday.

[starsinshadows]

Tony Tag Dump

⭐ 

[starsinshadows]

@knowseverythingaboutyou​ has a story and he wants to hear it

     "So remind me, how is it you know Romanoff?" he asked, knowing full well that Maria Hill, their illustrious client, had never specified how she knew Natasha except as 'a friend'. Naturally, this had Tony curious, and since all he had going on was setting up a base camp for her house - coordinating over video feed and radio where exactly he wanted cameras angled, and checking out the equipment he'd be handing out to the team as they got started to ensure that all batteries were charged and everything was working properly - it meant that he had plenty of attention left to give to her and her answers.      The garage, despite being connected to the house, was supposedly not a zone where anyone had experienced any activity, which Tony thought was a missed opportunity out of the supposed specter, but also why the base camp was being set up there. Assuming any of it was real, which Tony highly doubted, all of his equipment was a lot of energy, and everyone preferred it if it wasn't inside the house itself.      "It all just seems a little odd, this big house, just you living here. You don't seem like the type to be shaken by a little rattling chains - to the left a little, Barnes, no, the other left, got it - yet here we are pulling out all the stops stat," he observed, both her and her situation, and Bucky setting up the video feed in the bedroom upstairs. "So what spooked you?"

[starsinshadows]

knowseverythingaboutyou​:

“Resident… not-psychic.” Maria parroted. Oh good, they were even more of a mess than Natasha had warned her about. If this team hadn’t been Natasha’s, they never would have made it through the front door. She still wasn’t sure why Natasha was into the whole ghost hunter thing; when it came to most other phenomenon, the redhead was the first one to start the whole debunking discussion. But ghosts and magic didn’t get swept up in that, and Maria just couldn’t figure out why. Not that she tried very hard — Natasha’s work stories were infinitely more interesting than Maria’s, and not just because Maria’s tended to end in ‘but it’s classified.’

“There could be a family, they might be on vacation.” Ooh, she liked this Stark guy. Smart, snarky, tech savvy — made sense that Natasha would have wanted to keep him around. “And you could just be paying for very expensive exterminators.” She tapped her fingers against the table, considering him. “It wasn’t exactly my choice. The house. My grandparents…” that’s a whole story that she isn’t interested in getting into right now. “I’m not around a lot, figured it was silly to try and keep rooms I wasn’t going to be using furnished. Better a little bit empty than excessively gothic furniture, don’t you think?”

Maria hovered as Tony set up the tables, peering down to get a look at the tools while keeping her hands to herself. There was the undeniable urge to press buttons; one that most humans shared, but she was sure that they were specially calibrated. And considering that she wasn’t sure that she wanted them to stay longer than a day, Maria didn’t want to screw anything up that would stop them from proving or disproving the whole ghost theory.

“So you did all of this out of… what, a sense of boredom?” She asked, arching an eyebrow at him. Weird. Sure, rich people were allowed to be a little eccentric, but he didn’t strike her as that kind of rich person. The Steve Rogers thing made more sense, strange as that was too — she’d heard more than a few stories about how they got on each other’s nerves. “Right, but you said that only lasted for about a day, so which one of you is annoying the other now?” Maria tapped the end of the table, the knock of the wood echoing faintly in the garage. “You know, the one thing that I don’t get is that… well, ghosts tend to pop up in abandoned areas, mostly. Doesn’t sending the whole team kind of wreck the vibe the theoretical ghost is going for?”

     "It'll make sense when you meet Murdock. Call him a psychic and he'll correct that he's not psychic every time, even though he goes into places, pinpoints hot spots and can tell me what I’m going to hear on a playback live before I listen to it,” he explained, and while he was matter-of-fact about it, it irked him just a little that he hadn’t figured it out yet. He wasn’t the type to be taken for a fool or to fall for a hoax, and he was setting the equipment up himself. If there was some funny business, he should know, and yet, Murdock got results.      The look she got for the attempt about a family was utterly not convinced, nor was he about the exterminators, but the story finally came out about the house, and that made sense. There was obviously more of a story there, but nothing he really needed unless it came out that the grandparents were haunting the place. “Makes sense, though there’s definitely an argument for the excessively gothic aesthetic. You’ve got this big house you’re barely living in, it’d be great for parties, and Halloween lives for that gothic look. Bonus points if you can spin our coming here as proof of a haunting,” he offered. He might have been in this as a hobby, but he knew business.       ���Sure, boredom is a fantastic motivator. There are billions of dollars made each year in stupid games made purely because the average consumer is bored enough to try anything. I’m not entertained by phone apps as much as I am science, and in this case, it’s a mostly unexplored science,” he explained, still messing around with tech, which got him to the last set, which he was going to have to calibrate for her - handy that she was already there. “As far as I can tell, we’re trying to help people, everyone’s mostly having fun with it outside of Barnes getting targeted all the time, and if I actually got proof that it’s real, it’d be a pretty big deal.”      He picked up a camera rig, gesturing her over so that he could set it over her shoulders and start adjusting. She didn’t have to wear it yet, but the fewer things he had to fix when it was time, the easier it would all be. “We take turns driving each other up a wall, he’s especially good at being infuriating, but he’s good at this, I’ll give him that. You’re going to be going in with a buddy from the team, speaking of - and this is his choice not mine so take it up with him if you don’t like it - so you’ll get to see how the team thing works. You’ll all be splitting up into pairs and wandering around in the dark, so this camera is going to be your eyes while you’re out there. That should be quiet and creepy enough to get something if there’s anything to get, and if it isn’t, Barnes will get its attention. Trust me on that one.”

[starsinshadows]

knowseverythingaboutyou​:

“We hang out after work,” Maria tossed back immediately, glad that she was behind Tony and he couldn’t see the eyeroll she’d sent his way. He’d barely been in the house for two hours and he’d already asked five different variations of the same question. She knew Natasha could keep a secret; she assumed that Tony knew the same after working with her. If he saw her as an easier target he was going to be disappointed. Again.

“Is there a reason you’re setting up the cameras the way you are?” She asked, peering at his screens while he directed the rest of them around the house. “If you angle that one a little to the right, you’ll get a better view of the doorway into the kitchen,” she offered, pointing at the one not-Barnes (they hadn’t been introduced yet) was putting up in the dining room.

“What exactly is odd about a woman living alone in a house?” She wondered how deep Tony could dig himself into a hole before he realised. “I just asked Natasha if she could come by and take a look, I didn’t realise she was ‘pulling out all the stops, stat’.” Maria arched an eyebrow at him. She was pretty sure the cameras would show nothing except a real person breaking into her house — if there was anything at all on them. She’d been hesitant to call them at all, but Natasha had told her enough stories that Maria thought it was better to cover all her bases.

“Things getting moved around. A cabinet in my office was pulled away from the wall. Something in the attic.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “Natasha seemed cheaper than an exterminator.” She’d either get a kick out of that or make Maria pay for their next night out. “How’d you get into this?”

     'Disappointed' was a strong word. Really, all Natasha and Maria were doing was giving him another mystery to ponder over, and generally when he pondered, he went looking for answers. How many he'd find was up in the air, but it was easiest to just tell him and get it over with unless the endless curiosity was the desired result. It really didn't bother him.      "Resident not-psychic suggested the angle on that camera, actually. I don't really buy into the spooky magic business," he admitted, glancing over at the one she was specifically interested in. "If it was on me, I'd have pointed it the same way you said to try catching someone walking in, but Murdock's got a surprisingly high rotten tomatoes rating for this kind of thing, so we're giving that spot a try."      If he thought it was some kind of performance that he hadn't yet figured out, that was his own call, but he hadn't made it a secret that he didn't believe in it, and Murdock had actually agreed with him that he wasn't psychic, which was only more interesting. The fact that he still got results couldn't be ignored, though Tony had tried once or twice.      "Nothing odd about a woman living alone in a house, that just sounds like you're trying to divert attention," he corrected immediately, not about to get caught in that trap, because that was not what he'd said. "You're one person, no pets, no family, just this big house, doesn't even look like most of it's all that lived-in. The Natasha connection doesn't help in the slightest, because she's just as secretive, and also not generally cheaper than an exterminator, so I'm upping my estimation of how close you two are."      The entire time he spoke, he was adjusting things, and there was a table where equipment was obviously being set in specific groups - one set for each investigator, tuned for them in particular with their needs in mind. "Me? Needed a hobby, I like building things, and they needed someone to supply gear and make them look cool, so I bought the show and set them up with fun toys. That, and it annoyed Rogers for at least a day, which is always a goal."