Ch70. Bullying is bad

Tony's talk with Fury has shown him how serious the matter was.

He expected some kind of repercussions from this. After all, Natasha was not killing some unknown chumps. She was killing politicians, researchers, and businessmen who were deeply rooted in the Russian leadership hierarchy.

But Fury seemed more spooked than when he realized a Norse 'God' was going to attack New York.

It was a clear sign that the situation was much more serious than Tony previously thought.

After a brief consideration, he realized he didn't put much thought into the matter. If Russians freaked out and thought the Americans sent a spy to eliminate their leaders...

Because everyone knew who Black Widow was. They might not know her identity or origins but the fact she was a dangerous Russian spy who now worked for Americans was widely known in their circles.

Tony understood Natasha has probably chosen a card depicting black widow spider because it would drive terror to those in the know. To those, she was hunting. After a few of them have fallen, the rest would realize how she was choosing her targets and that they are most likely next.

But sill. If Russians responded by sending their own spies to kill American leaders, the situation could devolve into a rather serious conflict, maybe even a war between America and Russia.

That simply wouldn't do...

Still, it didn't mean Tony was going to call Natasha back. There were other ways to calm down the Russians and Tony has decided to deal with the matter in the singular way Fury would loathe the most.

After all, he did threaten his girl's life. Tony needed to show the big bald meanie that being a schoolyard bully was not a good thing!

That's why as a concerned citizen, Tony decided a bit of transparency could never be bad and in one fell swoop made the files about the project Red Room fully public, going as far as putting links leading towards these files on multiple social media and spamming the mails of the Russian officials with them.

Obviously, not many higher-ups in the Russian government were aware of the Red Room project. Only a very few important ones were and that's why when those started to die, the 'innocent' ones started to freak out because they had no idea why.

Now they knew.

Secrecy... pfft. Tony decided no more!

Sigh. Sometimes he was such a good samaritan...

With the news out, the war became quickly just an afterthought but the world went batshit crazy anyway, now simply for a different reason.

Careers fell in a matter of minutes as the witch hunt for the 'bad' guys started. The people were indignant at the idea of small girls being turned into assassins and honey traps. More so when they got to know that most of these girls would not even survive the training.

Tony's journalist debut on the internet as a Justiceman007 was a great success!

Receiving over fifty death threats on the first day alone was indeed a triumph for Tony. Still, he was glad he posted it under a nickname. He would like to think he learned a thing or two from his past rodeo with Mandarin about blatantly challenging terrorists and people willing to go too far for small stuff like this when his address was a matter of public knowledge.

He had enough missiles crashing in his living room during his past life. There was no need to take such risks again no matter how tempting showing his middle finger to them was.

And where did Fury come into all of this mess?

That was simple. The project Red Room's end goal was to create a perfect secret agency and information network for Russia. To make the best agents the world has ever seen.

Because of that, and Tony might or might not have emphasized that part a bit too strongly in the 'evidence' he provided to the world, the secret agencies like CIA, FBI, and... SHIELD came under heavy scrutiny.

Despite everything, SHIELD was under the wing of the World Security Council and this council was made up by politicians. Politicians, who understood that if SHIELD is doing some dastardly stuff behind their backs, it would come to bite them in the back because on paper, they were responsible for SHIELD's actions.

That would have never been a problem before. Now though, these same politicians had a first-front view on what would happen if the things SHIELD was doing came out to the light. Because obviously, SHIELD was not full of saints. Even if Tony put the fact it was infested by HYDRA vermin aside, SHIELD was doing some really questionable things.

There was a reason why the revelation of HYDRA's presence in SHIELD almost mentally put Natasha on her knees. She did some extremely shady stuff, assassinated people who seemed to be just normal citizens, did corporate espionage, and brought down companies, which in the end ruined the livelihood of many people.

But she always believed it had to be done for the best of the world.

When it came out that some of these jobs might or might not have been on the orders of HYDRA to promote their plans... it was rough for Natasha to deal with that knowledge.

But then there was another side of the coin. Just how many of her jobs were simply politicians on the World Security Council trying to make use of their position to get a leg up in business or get rid of their competitors or enemies supporters?

And that was just Natasha. What about the other agents?

Simply put, these politicians would definitely not want SHIELD to have an in-depth inspection. Now that Tony thought about it, neither would HYDRA want that.

But the public opinion seemed to differ. With this new sensation all over the internet, the trust of people in these shady government agencies seemed to be at an all-time low. Meaning, their trust in certain politicians seemed to decrease and that meant their prospects for the upcoming elections decreased.

And that meant the politicians started to do things like lobbying for higher security checks, inspections, and so on for those agencies.

It was frankly a massive mess and the pressure on directors of these agencies... Fury wink, wink... was immeasurable.

In just a few days, Tony managed to drive Fury into a paperwork-filled hell where he had to assuage this or that kind of zealous politician that tried to do a witchhunt on his organization, try to appease his bosses on the World Security Council, all the while managing SHIELD where 80% of people were getting extremely restless.

To be completely honest, Tony knew that right now, Fury was actually immensely glad the Black Widow was no longer under his employ. Just imagining the shitstorm having a former Red Room graduate in SHIELD with the current world situation would bring...

Tony doubted Fury would try to get Natasha back anytime soon after this. In fact, Tony doubted Fury would want SHIELD's name associated with Natasha in any form from now on. God help SHIELD if she was harmed by a SHIELD agent and the public was made aware...

Not that the big bald grouch would have time to actually try with all the damage control and negotiations he had to run.