Fandom Island and Town

Yelena wasn't sure how the gremlins knew about her baking class or her assignment. She assumed their time in the air ducts had gotten them access to Steve and Tony's planning sessions.

And she also wasn't sure why the gremlins were so interested in helping her. "What is this?" she asked, unrolling the document in front of her. "Blueprints?"

The design was hideous: a towering gingerbread fortress with jagged cookie walls scorched as if they’d been burned in the oven.

At its peak, a massive, glowing candy eye sat encased in a ring of molten sugar, which was disturbingly detailed for a dessert. Spikes of charred candy canes jutted from every corner. Rivers of black licorice webbed outward from the base, winding through shattered peppermint and gingerbread rubble. The whole thing radiated a sense of sugary doom.

“Absolutely not. I’m baking a house—one normal house. No apocalyptic gingerbread towers, no evil gumdrop cores, and definitely no licorice rivers,” she said flatly. "Go back to making coffee. And where the hell is my Peppermint Mocha?"

The gremlins made several gestures that probably should be noted in an HR report and went back to work as Yelena regretted being coerced by a moose into taking a baking class.

The Starbucks in the Stark Industries lobby had been disturbingly quiet all week. Yelena had initially assumed they’d wandered off and would show up again after the holiday. However, when she came into the office the Starbucks was empty. And there was no one to make her a peppermint mocha.

This would not stand.

She eventually tracked them down in the upper-level air vents. Grabbing a crowbar, she pried open one of the vent covers and climbed inside, muttering curses under her breath.

When she reached the source of the disturbance, Yelena stopped in her tracks, staring at the chaos before her.

The gremlins had converted a section of the vents into an "experimental beverage lab." Espresso machines sat wired together with glowing blue cables that had definitely been scavenged from Tony Stark’s tech. In the middle of it all was a bubbling cauldron-like contraption, filled with an ominous liquid that gave off a sickly sweet aroma.

Yelena cleared her throat loudly, making them freeze in place. All heads turned to her, wide-eyed and guilty.

“What. Is. This?” she asked, gesturing at the cauldron. None of them replied, of course. They only stared at her.

She crossed her arms and glared. “You’ve been hiding up here all week, leaving the lobby Starbucks to rot, and for this? I had to crawl through vents to find you. Look at my cool outfit! I'm a mess!”

One of the gremlins hesitantly held up a glowing cup of the concoction, offering it to her as if that would explain everything.

"I am not drinking that." she barked, pointing at the lab with her free hand. “Pack all this up and get it back to the lobby. Now.”

An hour later, the gremlins were back in their Starbucks with Yelena off to the side watching their every move.

There was a tragedy brewing at the Stark lobby Starbucks.

"What do you mean there’s no more pumpkin spice latte? That’s ridiculous. It’s the best drink you have. Why stop selling something so… delicious?”

The gremlin, unbothered, slid a red-and-white-striped cup toward her without a word.

Yelena pointed accusingly at the cup. "No. I don’t want a peppermint mocha. Does it have pumpkin? No. Does it have spice? Also no. And yes, I know the pumpkin spice latte has no actual pumpkin, but that’s beside the point.”

The barista gave her the same glassy-eyed stare they always saved for difficult customers.

"Fine!" Yelena huffed, snatching the cup. "But I’m not going to like it."

She stomped away, took a sip, and froze mid-step. It was good. Damn it.

From behind her, she heard a faint snicker. She whipped around, fixing the barista with a glare. "Shut up."

Muttering under her breath, she trudged back to her desk, the peppermint mocha in hand. As she sipped, her scowl deepened. Her new favorite drink.

Unbelievable.

Some people might get bent out of shape if some of their equipment suddenly became candy canes. Sure.

Yelena decided it roll with it though as was easy enough to replace any of her daggers and knives. So she was currently munching on one of her daggers while another was slowly dissolving in her mocha latte.

Look if things were weird here, Yelena was just going to take advantage of it, okay?

Sure, it was a holiday, but security didn’t take days off. Especially when certain individuals liked to take advantage of the fact that most people were too busy celebrating to notice a disaster brewing.

Take, for example, the gremlins working at the Starbucks in the lobby, who decided it was the perfect day to invent a cranberry espresso fusion. Their method? Compressing cranberries under high pressure to unlock maximum cran-flavor.

The result? A catastrophic failure. When Yelena arrived, every square inch of the café was smeared and dripping with cranberry sauce. The machines were ruined, the floor was sticky enough to trap boots, and the gremlins? They were drenched head to toe in their failed experiment, and having a cranberry sauce wrestling match over who messed up the pressure valve.

Yelena folded her arms, glaring at the lot of them. “Clean it up. Or I’ll shoot you in the kneecaps.”

Idle threat? Real threat?

The gremlins wisely decided not to find out.

Of all the things Yelena expected when she took a job at Stark Industries, dealing with a "security" issue at the gremlin-run Starbucks wasn't one of them.

The gremlins had tried to "upgrade" the espresso machine to run faster and produce more coffee. While they succeeded, the machine had turned into an espresso cannon, spraying the lobby like a firehose and pinning the gremlins against the wall.

Unfazed, Yelena stood there, debating whether to let them suffer their own genius or step in. With a heavy sigh, she walked over and unplugged the machine.

"Congratulations. You’ve invented the first espresso fire hose. Want to tell me why my boots are covered in coffee?"

The gremlins looked up at her with wide eyes, still dripping with espresso. One of them sheepishly offered her a cup filled to the brim with coffee, half of which spilled before it even reached her. Yelena just sighed and snatched the cup of their hand.

"Clean that up," she ordered, gesturing at the small lake of espresso in the lobby before heading off to add milk and pumpkin spice syrup to her free latte.