I'm a political nerd. I can't help it. I watch political news like a junkie. Nobody as talented as me needs to waste their time doing this, but I enjoy it and I find it interesting. So we were hosting an election night watch party, with my stable of mad scientists - Radcliffe, the Pride, Hansen, and Tony, where I was going to absolutely sweep the betting pool by betting truly inordinate amounts of money on the correct candidates in random house races. I'd gotten a bigger house to cope with the growing number of parties I was hosting and I was enjoying the game room.

"Massachusetts Third," Tony said, beginning to list his choices, "Texas Fifth, Florida 12th, California 8th, that's a freebie, and" he wrinkled his fingers together, "Montana at Large."

I started laying down checks on a long betting table, "D+21, R+8, R+3, D+4, and R+6." I said. The checks were worth millions of dollars, Tony and I were comically wealthy. "Two points of margin of error."

"That is a crazy parlor trick," Tony said. "You should be a political consultant."

"I'm just very good at this," I lied. No, I absolutely had a power boost for this sort of thing. "Besides, you don't even know if I've gotten the bet."

"You got the bet, nobody bets five million a pop like that without knowing that they're going to win."

"You might." I pointed out.

"That's because he's recklessly overconfident," Pepper said, leaning up against Tony's shoulder. "Are you trying to lose money?"

"He gave me five to one odds, I only need him to lose one to make it back."

I was not going to lose one. Pepper also seemed skeptical, "Tony, this man ran for office."

"He can't be this good at everything, that magic book of his doesn't contain this stuff."

"How'd you like it?" I asked, hoping to goodness that it would boost Tony's Iron Man suit performance.

"It's really interesting. Insane, but interesting. I found a lot of tips on assembling the Iron Man suits. And thanks for the recommendations on the nanites. Harder to do with metal objects of course," this was true, the vibranium armor was such a pain in the ass to make and vibranium was pretty easy to 'treat' into whatever attribute were most useful, "but I'm working on it. You sure the government doesn't mind you breaking the seal on their quantum tunneling movement system?"

"Don't move it to commercial purposes or attacking nuclear powers and I should be fine." The government lived in fear of Tony, me, and the Pride, it would do absolutely nothing to bother us in any way if it could avoid it. "You're a paying customer, if you want to teleport around in an iron prosthesis, more money to me."

"Twenty five dollars a pound, can't you get it any lower, it's killing my budget."

"I mean," I shook my head back and forth, "Maybe. But the monopoly rents are a big part of how I make money."

"They should do something about that," Tony said, pointing his finger at me. "You agree they should do something about that, right Victor?"

"I think Mike's the best person to handle Mike's money," Victor said, staring at the table as he took a drink. "You know you're going to lose all these bets right?"

"Nobody knows the future, not even the illustrious Michael Trent."

"I'm just warning you," Victor said, "Sometimes he does." He looked at me with a questioning face and I felt bad. He was probably worrying that we hadn't changed the future.

"Nah, this isn't a prophetic bet," I said mildly, "Old fashioned brain power and some modeling, that's all." I saw Victor's body visibly relax and I took that as a positive sign. "How's Iron Manning going?"

Pepper scowled. Pepper hated that Tony was Iron Man. "It's good, I'm doing good," Tony said, sensing his long-time girlfriend's mood. "Nothing interesting going on there."

"You know Tony, if you shared, it would make your life easier, give you more time at home."

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"That's a low blow," Tony said, "I have a beautiful woman at home."

"That you do," Pepper said, "Maybe you should think about sharing with the Defense Team."

"They're already fire breathing, shrinking super soldiers with regeneration and teleportation abilities, they're big boys, I think they'll be fine."

"Well, let me know," I said, trying to stay calm. It would be genuinely great if Tony shared the Iron Man suit and it would be a coup for me with the Hydra council, but it wasn't strictly necessary at this point. "You haven't created a super-advanced AI to manage your drones?"

"No," Pepper said as Tony looked ready to argue. "He has not."

Oh thank God. It would've been terrible if we'd been interrupted by Ultron on such a nice evening. "Thank you, Pepper. Victor, how're the kids doing?"

"They're enjoying little Persephone as always," Victor said. "She's a very smart kid. Almost spooky."

At this point, I was pretty sure that Persephone knew every word in the English language, but she couldn't use it form sentences still. But if she wanted the remote control, she could refer to it, or to dance or play or any of her various toys. It was fun. It was weird watching my powers come in piecemeal and watching her eyes dart up in the remembering motion I had only ever seen from the outside in a van in an alternate time. I wondered how the other me was doing, but I didn't really care. I had left behind the regrets that had driven his creation a long time ago - This was my home now. If he hadn't chosen Hydra and Andromeda, and I couldn't imagine he did, he had missed out on this, on Persephone, on everything I had wanted.

Still, it would be a nice universe to run to with the family gold as necessary.

"Yeah, I'm glad they've taken a shine to her."

"She's like a baby cousin," Victor observed, "And Molly appreciates not being the little one any more." The Pride had raised good kids for Victor to be able to dismiss it like that - Lots of kids would not be ecstatic to have a baby around. It was hard to remember this, but the Pride's kids were going to grow up to be honest-to-goodness, genuine hero characters. People who picked doing the right thing over their own families. Maybe I should've been worried about that, but they were all fourteen or twelve right now, or sixteen in the case of Nico's older sister, and none of them felt like a threat to me. Not right now anyway.

"Success!" I said happily. I looked over to Tony and Pepper and smiled. Tony looked a little nervously at Pepper who was suddenly wearing her 'friendly business' face. I don't remember this dynamic from the movies, where Tony was obviously besotted and Pepper was stuck saying, 'Yeah, okay,' but Tony had a ring since they got together and Pepper had turned him down once in the movies. So it made sense that when you saw them together, they were like this. "Kids growing up, they make you think about global safety."

"Ah, see, no kids, so we're fine," Tony said, waving off the moment. "Besides, I think we've done a lot for global security. If those Chitauri make a second pass at us, they'll discover that we are much more prepared than last time."

"Fair enough," I said. There was no pressing too hard with Tony. He could be a prickly guy. "Come on, we'll get back to this topic eventually. Let's go around on pinball before the results come in."

"Finally, something I can beat you in."

Tony could, indeed, beat me at pinball, which relied more on the sort of reflexes he was used to and less on my obscenely large mental capacity.

The election was a tight race, but Ellis pulled it out in the end, absolutely devastating the house Democratic ranks and taking away the supermajority from the Democrats in the Senate. I tried to stay in good spirits, I had won all five bets after all.