HAPPY NEW YEAR! (...Am I late?) Oh well, it's just a new year. Anyways, first story of the year! :D So yippee! It's sort of a sequel to "Rhodey's Plan", but not...You see it's the same idea, of a sort, just different. Oh well, you'll see what I mean what you read it! So, ENJOY!

Disclaimer: IMAA is not MINE!

"Will you stop doing that already?"

The redhead groaned. "I can't help it!"

Her blue-eyed friend sighed. "It hurts, Pepper!"

Pepper pouted. "Maybe you're just being a wimp."

Tony, the blue-eyed one, groaned as he rubbed his hands on his temples.

"Ow!" Complained Pepper.

"See what I mean?"

"You're just being harsh."

"How am I being harsh?" Tony asked, staring wide-eyed at her. "Never mind, you're not listening."

She crossed her arms, or at least tried to, but gave up when she found that doing so wasn't as easy as it should've been. So she let her arms hang at her side. She walked over to the couch and grumpily dragged Tony with her.

"Pepper!"

Pepper ignored him as she pulled him down on the couch with her. "I'm going to kill him!"

"Who me?" Questioned a voice at the armory door.

Both teens spun to face the person to blame for their troubles. Rhodey.

Pepper stood up and raised her arm, causing Tony to clumsily raise his own arm. "Yes you! I'm going to kill you!"

"Ow, Pepper! Stop doing that!" Tony said for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning.

Pepper again, ignored him. She then went and started running after Rhodey, or she attempted to. The only thing she managed was falling over along with Tony who she dragged down with herself.

Rhodey burst out laughing at their 'misfortune'. "You guys should see yourselves!"

"That's it!" Pepper shouted, as she pushed herself up and onto her feet. "Tony get up!"

Tony stood up rubbing his sore wrist. "I'm up!"

"I'm going to kill him, you with me?"

Tony sighed. "What choice do I got?"

"None."

Groaning, he still ended up trailing behind Pepper's angry pace as she chased after Rhodey. The one to blame.

xXx

The two stared at their wrists, feeling very conflicted on what they were going to do. After all, they were joined together by a pair of handcuffs, which by the way, weren't one of the toy ones from the dollar store. Where Rhodey managed to find one, was lost on them. The only thing they could have guessed was maybe Pepper's dad, but that made them question why her dad would give them to Rhodey in the first place.

What was worst of all…it was a school day.

Of course Rhodey would choose the one day that Pepper was tired enough to fall asleep next to Tony, in the armory, and Tony happened to fall asleep. All before Rhodey came to tell Tony that he should return to his house after bringing Pepper back. Though, instead of doing just that, Rhodey must have thought it was just the grandest of ideas to handcuff them together.

"What are we going to do!?" Pepper panicked. "We have school in less than 30 minutes! And we don't even have first hour together!"

"Calm down," Tony said. "I'll think of something."

"Can't you make a key?"

"Not in this amount of time!"

Pepper pouted. "What then?"

"Don't you know how to pick locks?"

"Not this kind." Pepper said, sighing. "Man, this sucks!"

They both took a look at the time, realizing they had only 15 minutes to get to school. They looked at the door and then to their connected hands. Taking in a deep breath, Tony sat down again, taking Pepper with him.

"We have to options," He started. "Skip school-,"

"No," Pepper interrupted. "I am not skipping school!"

"Then what do you suppose?"

"I don't know!" Pepper exclaimed, throwing her free arm into the air. "Let's see we can switch off going to the other's class, I'm sure if we explain the teacher' will give us a pass."

"Maybe you, but I'm sure none of the teachers are very fond of me." Tony reminded her.

"Right…but it's not like you care right?" Pepper added. "I mean you skip all the time, and I hate to be the one to inform you, but I know some of them aren't because Iron Man called"

Tony sighed. "Fine, we'll go to all you're classes."

"Great," Pepper said standing up. "Now let's go!"

xXx

"This is going to be embarrassing." Pepper said, staring at the door ahead of them.

Her first hour class.

"C'mon, let's just get it over with." Tony said opening the door.

Lucky for them, they arrived just a few minutes before the warning bell, so they had time ahead of themselves to talk to Pepper's first hour teacher. Stepping in, they saw the teacher writing down something on the board.

Looking over, the teacher noticed them.

Pepper smiled sheepishly at her teacher. "Excuse me, but can we talk to about something?"

"Sure thing, Miss Potts. What is it you need?"

Pepper rose her hand, taking Tony's along with it. "We're kind of…stuck together and I – we were wondering if it was alright with you if he joined us for today."

"May I ask how this happened?" Her teacher asked skeptically, knowing full well of Tony's reputation for 'skipping'.

Both Tony and Pepper laughed awkwardly.

"Yeah, Rhodey our friend," Pepper began. "Likes to mess with us."

"Mr. Rhodes did this?"

Both teens nodded.

The teacher sighed. "And there's absolutely no separating you two, at all, before class starts?"

"No." Replied both teens.

"Then I guess I have no choice, I'll write Mr. Stark here a pass to excuse him from his class."

"Thank you." Pepper said as she took her seat just in time for the warning bell.

Since they couldn't separate very far, they had to move two desks next to each other, so they were basically touching. Pepper though, had the difficulty of having her dominant hand connected to Tony's hand. So she had so drag his hand around as she wrote. While her class took place, the teacher had passed him some extra worksheets she had, saying that she couldn't let him just dilly-dally around in her class.

It was expected, but it didn't mean they liked it when the other students went to question what Tony was doing in their class, and most of all, why the two were handcuffed together. Plenty of the students laughed and made a big fuss about it, until the teacher put a stop to the noise all together.

Soon enough, the end of class bell rang.

"Phew!" Tony said as they exited the room. "One class down, 7 to go!"

Pepper nodded. "Thankfully the next class we share."

"Yeah, with Rhodey."

Pepper glared at nothing just at the thought of their other friend. "I'm going to kill him!"

Tony just laughed nervously and said nothing. There was no way he was going to interfere with Pepper's plans. Not when she was like that. Plus, he kind of agreed that Rhodey had to pay for what he had done.

Now they stood in front of their second hour class.

"Here goes nothing." Pepper said as she stepped through the door.

A few student who arrived before them laughed when they saw the two's predicament. The teacher gave the two a weird look, asking the two to come to his desk.

"Can you guys explain," The teacher paused, gesturing to their joined wrists. "This?"

Tony scratched the back of his neck with his free hand. This was a far stricter teacher. "You see, our friend, Rhodey thought it was a good idea to do this," he gestured to their joined wrists. "And no, we can separate that easily."

"Are you lying to me? Mr. Rhode's is one of my best students."

"No, I bet if you ask him, he'll tell the truth."

As if on cue, Rhodey walked into class, books in hand.

"Mr. Rhodes, can you come here for a moment?" The teacher called.

"Sure." Rhodey shrugged, trying to contain his laugh when he noticed his two friends.

"Did you do this to them?"

Rhodey bit his lip. "Yeah…"

The teacher sighed. "I'm disappointed in you, Rhodes."

"Sorry." Rhodey said. "I just, they were, I-,"

"Take a seat you three."

With the two or at least Pepper, glaring at Rhodey, they took their seats, thankful that they were already 'table partners'. The only thing they had to do, was switch seats from how they originally sat.

As far as the other hours went, it went perfectly fine. As perfectly fine as things could get when handcuffed to one another, and having to go through the awkward situation every hour. Things went as well as they possibly could in that situation, until this certain hour at phy-ed.

For obvious reasons, they were excused from changing for the day. Although they were 'freed' from that task, they were still permitted to do everything everyone else was doing. Which of course involved push-ups, sit-ups, jogging, and any other warm up they did before they went on to do whatever else. That didn't turn out so well. One would out run the other, tugging the other down. Then the next they had horrible timing with things, so in all phy-ed was proving to be quite difficult.

At least they had it easy with the activity they were doing that day. It was dodge ball….okay, maybe semi-easy.

Pepper bent down to grab a ball that rolled passed her, taking Tony down with her. Though, he didn't complain because it saved him from getting slammed in the face. Though, he did complain when she tried to throw the ball with the wrong hand and ended up throwing him to the ground, taking herself with him.

Laughter erupted from the class, but the two ignored their fellow classmates. They just focused on standing up and untangling themselves from each other.

"Sorry…" Pepper said, red in the face.

Tony nodded, rubbing his shoulder with his free hand. "No problem."

She laughed nervously as she ducked from a ball coming towards her. "This is really pissing me off."

"Yeah, I'm angry too, Pep. " Tony replied, picking up a ball and getting someone on the opposite team out.

Too wrapped up in her anger, she was hit in the stomach with a ball. She was out. She shrugged, not really caring much for the game and dragged Tony with her to the side lines. It was agreed upon by majority rule that if one of them were hit, then both of them were out.

Luckily for them the bell rang soon later and they were left with one class left.

xXx

"FREEDOM!" Pepper cheered throwing her arms in the air.

Tony winced. "Not exactly, Pep."

She gave him an apologetic look. "Oops…Sorry, Tony."

"Its fine, I'm used to it."

She scoffed as she lightly punched his arm. "Jerk!"

Tony laughed lightly as he rubbed the spot she hit. "Let's just go home."

"Yeah, and get Rhodey to remove this!" Pepper said, her voice seeking revenge.

It was that moment that she noticed something. It was weird. She felt it deep down insider herself, and she couldn't quite place what it was. It was…strange. As she thought more on it, she felt her heartbeat pick up and her face warm up. The feeling was strange, yet somehow it felt natural and familiar. She wondered if she'd felt this way before and what it was she was feeling. She wondered why she didn't know what she was feeling even though it should be a simple task. As simple and natural as breathing.

Then suddenly her hand was warm, and there was a comforting pressure wrapping around her hand. She looked down, her cheeks getting even warmer. Warmer and warmer they got as she looked to the hand that was linked with Tony's. No more by just the handcuffs, but by hands.

Tony had grabbed her hand.

"Tony?"

"Sorry…" He started, his hand beginning to let go. "I just thought…maybe it would have been easier…I didn't mean to...I just thought…and you know…"

"Stop talking, Tony." Pepper said.

Tony instantly shut his mouth, and widened his eyes when he felt her grab the hand he just pulled away from her.

"I guess it would have been easier, huh?" She laughed. "Less painful too."

Although her face was also red, it didn't compare to how red Tony's face was at that moment. Instead of acknowledging that feature that spread across both their faces, they moved on. Even as they both saw the other's reddened face. Either accepting that they were blushing, or denying that they saw the other's, didn't matter.

"So, we confront Rhodey for the key?" Pepper questioned as they walked.

"We could…but I can make a key for it myself." Tony reminded her.

Pepper nodded. "Yeah, I guess you can always do that."

Tony smiled over at her. "Then as soon as we get these off, we'll go straight to Rhodey to give him what he deserves."

Laughing excitedly, Pepper nodded her head quite vigorously. "I am not going easy on him!"

"And neither am I."

xXx

It wasn't too much later that the two arrived at the armory. This time around they didn't have such a difficult time as they had that morning. Not only did they not trip and fall and take the other with them, but they did not even feel any tug or resistance from the other. Holding hands turned out to help them substantially better than not.

Tony got straight to work on creating the new key to free them from the object that caused them so much trouble in one day. He worked as Pepper sat close to him, watching on as he worked.

All was good, and there was no sign of the one responsible for all of this to mess them up. Well, all was well until the clock on the computer read: 5: 30 P.M.

That was the moment Pepper's dad decided to call her and tell her that she had to be home, she asked for extra time, only getting herself a strict time of being home by six. So she urged Tony to working faster, not wanting to get in trouble with her dad for some stupid prank Rhodey decided to play. With how much he'd already been working on creating that extra key, Tony was pretty close to being done. But by that time, there was another issue to deal with.

Pepper had to go to the bathroom. Really bad.

It didn't help that she was holding it in since after school ended, but that she hadn't been able to go all day. Which was just another reason to just go and kill Rhodey that instant. Too bad the teen was her friend and she was against killing. Otherwise she wouldn't have held back.

"What are you doing, Pepper?" Tony asked when she started getting fidgety, tugging his hand away from what he was working on every now and then.

"Sorry…I kind of have to go to the bathroom…" She stated.

Tony had been aware of this close to an hour ago, but at that time she had promised him that it wasn't bothering her too much and she could most definitely wait until he finished working on the new key.

"Can't you hold it? At least just a little longer?" He asked.

Still fidgeting, she shook her head. "I'm trying! I've been holding it in almost all day!"

"There's not much I can do, Pep." Tony said. "I'm almost done, just give me 15 more minutes."

She whined, but didn't complain. As much as she didn't like it, he was right. There wasn't much he could do about it. At least not with the way they were still connected by their wrists. Unless she really wanted things to be awkward between them too, she was going to have to hold it in as much as she could.

Which was what she did, until the door to the armory opened.

Her head shot towards whoever it was, her red hair whipping behind her as she did. Her gaze quickly fell on none other than the person to blame, the cause of all their troubles.

James 'Rhodey' Rhodes.

"RHODEY!" She practically screeched.

Paying no heed to Tony, or what he was working on, she shot up from where she stood and basically dragged Tony to where Rhodey stood at the entrance of the armory.

Lucky for Tony, and mostly likely Rhodey as well, Pepper was forced back to her knees by her bladder.

"Whoa, what's with Pepper?"

"Give me the key!" Pepper demanded, holding out the hand that was connected to Tony, for her free hand was keeping her bladder in.

"What's with you?" Rhodey asked stepping away. "I'll give you the key in a sec."

"Now, James!"

Now Rhodey looked scared as he dug around in his pockets searching for the key. He started mumbling to himself, before he smiled and started digging around in his backpack he still had slung over his shoulder.

"Now that's strange…" Rhodey said, then quietly to himself, "I can't seem to find it."

Too bad for him he wasn't quiet enough for Pepper still heard him, she sucked in a breath. "YOU LOST IT!?"

"Sorry…?" Rhodey offered.

"When I get free again," Pepper glared, shooting daggers at the teen. "I swear Rhodes, you better start running!"

"Okay, okay! I'll go find the key!" Rhodey promised.

He quickly ran to go out the door, but before the door even opened for him, he stopped. Then he turned around looking at the two teens that were on the ground. Although he didn't quite understand what they were on the floor for, there was one thing he was more confused about…

Narrowing his eyes in utter confusion, he looked directly at Tony. "Wait, why haven't you don't anything to separate each other?"

"I was trying to make an extra key but –"

"Extra key?" Rhodey asked, further confused. "Couldn't you just use any of the metal cutters you use for removing the armor…?"

.

.

.

"WHAT!?"

xXx

Happy stared at the teen beside him for about the fifth time that day. "So…what happened to you exactly?"

The dark skinned teen next to him, glared at the taller boy. "What's it matter to you, I already told you."

"But I don't understand," Happy began. "You fell down the stairs…?"

"Bingo."

"So you're telling me that you broke your arm and your leg, and not to mention a concussion from just falling down the stairs?" Whitney asked, incredulous.

"Yep."

Happy shook his head laughing. "Whatever you say, bro."

xXx

After the two broke the chain that linked them together for that day, Pepper darted to the bathroom. That left Tony alone with Rhodey who was stupid enough to stay behind and not run for his life. Which he should be doing at that moment.

The moment Pepper got out of the bathroom, was the moment Rhodey finally decided it was time to run. Even Tony, who already was smashed on the head for 'being so stupid that he couldn't even figure out something so simple', felt like running even though he should be the one joining her in her chase for Rhodey.

After what seemed like hours of chasing with no catch, Pepper's phone rang. On the other line was a very angry Virgil Potts. She had stayed almost two hours passed the time she'd been given. This phone call distracted Rhodey just enough to take his eyes off of where he was running…

It wasn't very smart of him for the next thing he knew, he was under a shelf and many full boxes. Then it was within the next half hour that he was in the hospital being treated for a broken leg, a broken arm, and a concussion.

He missed the next few days of school, and had loads of homework to do.

Although Tony and Pepper felt bad that their friend was injured, they couldn't bring themselves to completely forgive the boy for the prank he pulled on them. Not until they could get back at him for the horrible day their friend had given to them.

Needless to say, the only good that came from what Rhodey had done wasn't big, but very important. It's exactly what started the relationship between an ebony haired boy and a redheaded girl.

As long as this story took for me to write, I think it went pretty well. I mean, school's started back up, and everything. Anyways, how'd you like it?

Fun Fact: I can't eat too much of a minty candy cane, because if I eat so much of it, most of the time, I start gagging on how minty it is...Weird?

I had been in such a writing mood on New Years, but that practically popped like a balloon. Especially since school started, and I found a new anime. It doesn't help that I'm getting sick again...great. Anyways, Hopefully I'll see you guys soon with an update for one of my other stories!

Hugs and Love, SilverPedals! :D