Days continued to pass for O5-1, known to few as Alexander Ricci. As the sole member of the O5 command, he needed to deal with a tremendous amount of work. All made worse by the lack of crucial Foundation facilities which added extra loads to all other facilities and most of all him.
Still, he had no choice but to work his hardest to keep the Foundation working as efficiently as possible while hiding from the entire world, which included a certain one-eyed pirate and a few highly advanced hidden nations.
Many eyes looked at this world from all around, which only made it all the more difficult to remain hidden while carrying out the Foundation's lofty goals. Every day, Alex was tempted to use more of his stockpile of points to summon a few more SCPs to increase the personnel available to him.
However, the risk of a dangerous SCP kept him from doing that, as well as knowing that most facilities would only be a greater drain on his limited resources and time.
He had some ideas for ways to make quite some money, but a few of those just needed time, like waiting for the events of Iron Man and buying up shares of Stark on the cheap. That alone could earn him a few billions. Yet Alex knew well enough that the Foundation at its full size would need a budget up in the trillions!
He knew this from spending some of his precious free time looking over Foundation data, and damn, some SCPs and their research was an unending drain on finances. Not to mention how often an SCP couldn't be moved, which meant buying up land.
Adding up the needed bribes and salaries and other expenses and you had the single most expensive organization in the world.
"After my deal with the Mandarin, I should get some more breathing room. Which means that deal can't go wrong!" Alex swore to himself as he left his bunker to focus on the work of the Ricci family.
--------------------------------
[With Tony Stark]
While the world's most powerful shadow was kept busy with work. The world's greatest genius was instead fighting his own boredom.
Tony was the type that would go between phases where he would get completely obsessed with some kind of invention and the other time, he would relax with some pretty girl and have some fun like the playboy he was.
Over the past half a year, he had been working on his most outstanding work yet. A one of a kind invention way ahead of its time just like Tony's own genius!
Just A Rather Very Intelligent System. Or J.A.R.V.I.S. as he called it. He would probably never admit out loud to anyone that he had spent a good bit of time coming up with that acronym.
Still, since he finally had a proper breakthrough months ago, Tony had been busy making his vision a reality. And Tony never failed at what he set out to do. Which is why he was now the proud owner and inventor of the world's one and only A.I!
Creating something so ahead of its time hadn't been easy and had taken a long time. While Obadiah had done his best to keep the company running, Without Tony to pump out new tech for so long, the poor man had been getting almost desperate by the time the A.I was done.
Usually, Tony would have gone out to celebrate his new invention as soon as it was done. But this time, he had wanted to play around with it, and since Obadiah had been desperate for something, Tony had used Jarvis to help upgrade and fix some things over the past few weeks.
After getting Obadiah off his back, as the man was now busy turning Tony's work into money, the genius was left alone and bored. Something that never proved a good idea.
*PEEP*
"It would seem the update was a success, sir." The voice of Jarvis filled the room and made Tony, who was lying down on the couch, turn his head toward the terminal.
"Was there ever any doubt of that? After all, the code was written by none other than me!" Tony said as he got up and picked up his tablet to check the code himself for any problems.
"Well, given that you were drinking throughout writing it, I was worried." The AI responded back with the dry humor he had patched into its code last night.
"Sure seems like it's working without any problems, though." Tony said as he threw his tablet aside and returned to lying down.
"Jarvis, check if there are any parties worth attending going on tonight."
"Sorry, Sir, I'm afraid that there are no parameters for what parties you might find worthy of attending."
"Well, we need to have that fixed at once. Look through the net for articles about me attending parties in the past. Then match those up with articles of me leaving said party with a beautiful woman and further articles of the woman after the fact."
"Just one moment, Sir." Jarvis then began executing the order and, filtered through an unbelievable amount of data and started to run algorithms that tried to find similarities between the parties he had attended in the past and find factors that seemed to indicate which party he might enjoy attending the most.
"Should those articles have any links with those about your secret child, sir?" Jarvis asked soon after as he had found that it seemed that most of the women he had returned with from a party also had articles linking them to a secret child.
"I don't have a secret child! In fact, find out where that damned rumor came from in the first place!" Tony said as he sat up while huffing and puffing. He had tried to find out on his own before, but whoever was behind the whole thing sure knew how to hide.
After letting Jarvis work for a few short minutes, he already managed to do what Tony hadn't in days of trying. "It would appear the first mentions of it came from three people working for the US Air Force, sir."
"The damn military? Why the fuck would they do something like that? Find out!" Tony knew how important he was to the military. He didn't doubt that he was considered a national asset of the highest importance. So he couldn't understand why they would do something like that.
"It would appear that something was stolen from them by one Alexander Ricci. And the article was meant to move focus away from that." Jarvis responded back surprisingly quickly.
"Ricci stole something from them? Can you find out what it is?" Tony was getting more and more interested the more he learned.
He knew Alexander personally. He had met the guy a few times as well. The last time was at his parents' funeral. He had joined the younger Tony for a few drinks that time. Though he was unnerved by the fact he was supposedly old as fuck while looking so young.
"I can't find anything other than it might have been a plane. Though I will note that Mr Stane sent you a message months ago about being invited by Ricci to study the object." Jarvis came back soon after.
"Oh? What exactly did Obadiah say?" Tony asked, intrigued.
"I resent it to your phone, sir." Jarvis replied as Tony's phone vibrated.
Picking up his phone, Tony started to read the message from Obadiah. It was short and very much like him. Just informing Tony that if he got bored, he could give Ricci a call and go help him look at something he had gotten his hands on.
He also mentioned that while Ricci wanted Tony to help his own people to understand what they had gotten their hands on. Tony should try to get some inspiration from it as well.
Very much like his old friend, never letting go of an opportunity to get some new tech to sell. Still, Tony was finding it tempting.
"You also have another message from Mr. Ricci. Sir. Sending it over now." Jarvis voiced out before Tony got a new text.
This one was indeed from Ricci himself and was a request worded kinda like a challenge about creating some powerful EMP shielding. It seemed that Ricci had found a cave somewhere with a unique effect of creating a powerful EMP field if a current were introduced.
Stark Industries was the current leader in EMP shielding as it was. So it made sense he would turn to Tony if he needed something even better. Still, the idea of a natural cave being capable of something like generating an EMP field was interesting for sure.
"Jarvis, have Happy organize a party and tell Obadiah to arrange a meeting with Ricci at his place. I'm curious about what the Air Force lost that made them desperate enough to sling mud at me," Tony said, concluding that despite his curiosity, his desire to party took precedence.
------------------------------------------
[SITE-001]
It was dinner time at the Ricci mansion, and the master of the place was sitting at the end of a long table while eating a nice bit of red meat. Alex was the type of person who had red meat at least once a day, and it needed to be bloody.
This habit had, in fact, made some people joke that he was a vampire. Well, when someone has been unageing for half a century, then it is only reasonable for people to come up with their own guesses. In fact, Alex made sure to spread so many different rumors out among the underworld that it was hard to know which was his own and which other people came up with.
"Sir, it has been confirmed that SHIELD has greenlit Natasha Romanoff for solo missions. We anticipate they'll soon push her into challenging situations, likely leading to her disillusionment with the organization," an aide reported during dinner.
Alex, with a smile, responded, "Is that so? It seems Fury is eager to drive his latest asset right into our welcoming arms. And what about our own operatives?" He inquired further.
"As you're aware, Sir, following our successful capture of General Dreykov, we extracted vital information and secured his assets, including the Red Room and its personnel. While none rival Natasha Romanoff's skill, we still have a significant number of talented agents undergoing further training."
Alex probed again, "When will their training be complete?"
"By spring, for the initial group. We're planning a continuous integration of agents into Foundation personnel for the coming years. Notably, O5-8 has requested the first selection from these agents for her new mobile task force," the aide replied confidently.
Alex, acknowledging his own policy, mused internally, 'This is the first time I have faked the orders of other O5 members. I can only hope that it won't cause any problems down the line.'
"We also have news from Mr Stane. He has sent out a decent-sized shipment of weapons, ammo, weapon parts, and raw materials for nuclear weapons." Another subordinate said shortly after.
"I trust it was all handled in a way that left no clues or tracks leading back to us." Alex didn't even bother looking up at this report.
"We did all we could. We can't ensure that Mr. Stane didn't leave a few clues, but he is normally too good for that." The man answered easily.
"That is the best we can get, I guess. Anything else to add?"
"Yes, Sir. He also said that Tony Stark wanted to come over in response to an invitation from you."
"Ahh yeah, I did invite him in to look at the quinjets. Have one of them set aside so he can tinker with it and ensure we have plenty of engineering personnel there to learn from him." Alex said as he indeed did remember giving that offer some time back.
He had pretty much given up on it, and good progress had already been made without his help. But Alex was not about to turn down the chance of getting one of the world's best inventors and engineers to upgrade some of his gear.
The rest of the meal continued with one of his men stepping up and giving their report about things that either purely conserved the Ricci crime family or things that had no apparent ties with the Foundation. Well, except when O5-8 was brought up, but without any context, it honestly didn't give away much.
So, most of it was just about the expansion of activities as he had ordered. They met with the expected amount of resistance, though in clearing out rivaling powers, there was a chance of encountering objects of interest, so every mission was carefully monitored by trusted personnel.
This was also one of the reasons they were getting so many SCPs. It was only a matter of time before they ran into someone using SCPs to try and stop him. This has already happened a few times so far. Yet every object hadn't given his Foundation personnel much trouble, even if they lost some D class.
Thus far, he had been keeping clear of the more notable villains from the MCU with either some kind of powers themselves or who had some SCP humanoid objects working for them.