Story: RoboMouse
Author: saichick
Challenge: Pepperony 100
Theme: 031 Joke
Rating: PG-13

Timeline: Between IM1 and IM2

Preview: Pepper is afraid of mice, so Tony cooks a little something up in the lab for her. A Pepperony one shot.

Pepper was afraid of mice.

Okay, maybe afraid was a bit strong of a word to describe how she felt about them, Pepper insisted, but Tony couldn't think of any other word to accurately describe her reaction last week when a tiny grey mouse had run out from under one of the workbenches in his Stark cave and run straight across her shoe. Pepper had given an ear-splitting shriek and leaped into the air as though suspended by pulse reactors before landing, snapping a heel, and shrieking and leaping a second time right into his arms.

"M-m-mouse!" she had stuttered, oblivious to the fact she had landed in his arms "bridal style" and he was holding her off the floor so her bare foot wouldn't have to touch the offensive little critter. She had been furious when he had laughed and told her it was only a mouse. She had stormed out of there, hobbling lopsidedly up the stairs on one heel and treated him icily the rest of the day. She was in a better mood now, but Tony very much wanted to create as many opportunities as possible to get Pepper into his arms again.

He had screwed up the night of the dance. Pepper had dropped her guard, only for a moment, and leaned in to kiss him. After 10 years of resisting his advances, he had been shocked that it was Pepper who had finally initiated a kiss. He had hesitated, and then the opportunity was gone. By the time he got up the courage to talk to her about it (it took saving her from Stane to finally give him the courage to raise the subject); she had rebuilt and fortified her emotional defenses against him. When he tried to tell her he considered her to be his superhero girlfriend, she had turned him down cold.

A devious plan formed in Tony's mind. If mice scared her that much, perhaps it was time for the Stark mansion to suffer an infestation of the little beasties? Of course, since he didn't want real mice knawing at the delicate electronics he built or leaving their little turds all over his house. Simply going to the pet store and buying a few dozen mice wouldn't be a good idea. But, never being one to back down from a challenge, Tony began to obsess about how he could recreate the situation to get the desired response. Mouse across foot = Pepper in arms. It was simple. All he needed to do was find a mouse up for the task.

"JARVIS," he said. "Open a new project. We'll call it Jerry, after the mouse in Tom and Jerry."

"Yes, Mr. Stark," JARVIS replied, "what are the parameters of this project?"

"I'd like you to compile all the footage you can find about natural movement in mice," Tony stated. "I'm interested in creating a miniature robotic mouse that looks and moves like a real mouse, but can be programmed to do specific tasks."

"Is this to scare Miss Potts again?" JARVIS asked.

"Ahhh … no …," Tony stammered, trying to come up with a plausible excuse for building a robotic mouse. JARVIS was programmed to follow his commands, but the AI had developed a maddening tendency lately to circumvent his orders and do whatever Miss Potts asked of him if there was any ambiguity at all to do so. Finally he thought of an excuse, "the mouse will have a miniature transmitter and cameras," he stated, "it's for the military. A spy mouse. A top secret military project. You are to tell no one. Not even Miss Potts."

"Very well, Sir," JARVIS sarcastically replied, "a top-secret spy mouse. Shall I also download specs for cameras and microphones for this spy mouse?"

"Yes, please do," Tony said. Actually … a spy mouse with a microphone and camera could be rather fun. Perhaps peek up into places the modest Miss Potts had never let him get a glimpse of? Such as a little further up her slim pencil skirt? Hmmm… what color panties did she wear? Inappropriate applications for spy mouse technology flitted through his mind as he began to sketch out a prototype.

He was working on it several days later he heard the sound of Peppers heels click-click-clicking down the stairs to his workshop. He hurriedly shoved the prototype to one corner of his work bench and threw a rag over it just as she opened the air lock and walked inside. Tony turned to her, a guilty smile on his face as he drummed his fingers on his arc reactor and did his best to appear nonchalant.

"The DOD is requesting a meeting with you at the end of the week," she rattled off, her nose buried in her clipboard and not even glancing up at the table, "the MIT commencement is next week and you need to write a speech, and you need to sign these papers."

"Okay, Pepper," he replied docilely and smirked, trying and failing to keep a mischievous twinkle out of his eyes.

"Okay?" she asked, surprised. She had expected an argument from him about the first two items on the list.

"Yeah, okay," he said, quirking an eyebrow as though he didn't have any idea what she was talking about and giving her his most innocent smile, all the while praying she didn't notice the little tail he had left sticking out from under the rag.

"Okay, then, ahm," Pepper stammered, frowning slightly, trying to remember what was next on her agenda. "Lunch. What do you want for lunch?"

"Oh … anything you want," he said, smiling, while casually reaching over and trying to shove the tail all the way under the rag before she noticed it. "Just order it … I'll eat it."

"Okay … then … I'll do that," she replied before turning to go back upstairs. He breathed a sigh of relief, but almost shit his pants when she suddenly turned and reached over to the rag, saying:

"Oh, that's where I left it!"

Tony guiltily placed his hand onto the rag to prevent her from lifting it up and seeing what he was building. If she caught wind of what he was up to, she would be furious.

"Tony, what is up with you today?" she asked as she finished reaching to a spot behind robomouse and picking up her Blackberry. She gave him a curious look as she walked back upstairs.

The moment she was up the stairs, he breathed a sigh of relief. Whew! Close call! Tony spent the rest of that week getting the movement right on the mouse. Building a carriage to house a tiny AI, microphone and camera was simple enough. The hard part was making the mouse's movements realistic enough to look credible upon casual inspection. Pepper would not be fooled by a toy mouse on wheels!

As he was finishing up the final details, fur and whatnot, he realized he could be doing more to build suspense. How could he make his little experiment more realistic? He decided to leave subtle clues throughout the house hinting at a mouse infestation.

Waiting until she left for the night, Tony snuck into the room Pepper used as her office (when she wasn't parked in the living room on her laptop) and opened her desk drawer. He snickered at his own cleverness as he took her staple-remover and used it to make mouse "tooth marks" on the edge of some of the folders on top of the pile. Then, for added drama, he dropped 5 or 6 tiny chocolate jimmies on top of the pile to look like mouse turds.

Not satisfied with just one clue, he looked around the room at what else he could do to heighten her anxiety. Pepper always kept a spare pair of shoes and change of clothes at the mansion just in case. He felt a bit like a foot fetishist, picking up her black high-heeled pumps and lightly smelling the leather before deciding how to plant clues in the sexy instrument of torture. Mouse nest! Tony got some cotton balls out of the medicine cabinet, "chewed" them up with the "mouse teeth" (i.e., staple remover), and mixed in a few more chocolate jimmies to make it look like an entire colony of mice had reared pups in her shoe.

He then wandered into the kitchen. Searching through his cupboards, he decided to leave several more mouse clues, "chew" marks on several boxes of cereal and crackers, jimmies strategically scattered about here and there, and another "nest" right where she would reach in and touch it when she reached in to get a spoon to mix up his morning espresso. Since he knew Pepper tended to multitask as she made coffee, the probability that she would reach in and touch the "poopy nest" before she looked where she was touching was quite high.

The fun started as soon as Pepper arrived for work the next morning. As expected, the first thing Pepper did was start brewing a pot of espresso to get their blood flowing for the day. Tony hung in the doorway to the kitchen making small talk about what needed to get done that day so he'd be able to see her reaction.

"What am I supposed to say at that MIT thing?" he asked to distract her just as she was reaching for a spoon. He wanted to see her reaction when she actually touched the fake nest.

"Aaaahhhhh," Pepper squealed in disgust, ripping away her hand and shaking it, rushing to the faucet to scrub her hand as soon as she realized what she had grabbed. "Disgusting! Tony … we've got to call an exterminator!"

"Okay," he docilely replied, fighting the urge to laugh or otherwise clue her in that he found this extremely funny. He watched with bemusement as Pepper reached under the sink to find some rubber cleaning gloves, and then ripped the entire drawer out of the cabinet, dumping everything in the sink and dumping half a bottle of bleach over the cutlery to kill any germs. Tiny drops of bleach splashed on her black suit, almost instantly leaving her looking like a reverse-spotted Dalmatian.

"My suit!" she exclaimed with much dismay. "It's ruined!"

"Don't worry," he said, suppressing a snicker. "I'll buy you a new one." She opened her mouth to argue with him. "It's a business expense," he insisted. "Cleaning up mouse poop isn't part of your job description. It's a legitimate expense." He knew only too well that Pepper otherwise wouldn't let him buy her things unless it was a special occasion when bosses and employees normally exchanged gifts, such as birthdays and Christmas.

Pepper settled into her daily routine of answering emails, returning calls, running interference for him, and monitoring what was being said about him and Iron Man in the media. Tony began to become impatient. She still hadn't gone into her office. His mind began to whir as he tried to think of an excuse to get her to look in her desk drawer. He hadn't bothered to actually look at what the folders were that he had "mouse chewed" last night, so he wasn't sure which project to say he wanted her to retrieve to get her to open the drawer. Finally, he decided to wing it.

"Hey, Pepper," he asked, putting on his most serious, deadpan expression, "I've been looking over some old projects lately. Do you have the file for the wind farm?"

"Yeah, sure," Pepper looked up, surprised.

Tony had outright rejected the idea of Stark Industries investing in a wind farm before he went to Afghanistan because he felt it was outside the scope of what Stark Industries should do. Pepper, on the other hand, supported the project and was disappointed when he had shot it down without even looking it over. Tony generally bore contempt for all things related to the liberal agenda, so he knew the fact he was suddenly interested in it would please her. Besides … he had once bore the same contempt for his father's arc reactor technology because it was not cost effective from a purely per-kilowatt-hour profit-making perspective … the same technology that now kept him alive and made the Iron Man suit possible. It was a good excuse to further his devious plan.

Pepper gracefully stood up right and click-clack-clicked her way into her office. He could hear her open and shut the drawer, and then shriek. "Arrrrgghhh!" her voice floated down the hallway as she shouted in disgust. "The little buggers have gotten into my file folders!"

"I thought you were going to call the exterminator, Pepper," he called out between guffaws, sticking his hand over his mouth to prevent himself from bursting out laughing, bending over to stifle a laugh and holding his sides because it hurt to keep it all inside. "That was like, a week ago?" he continued. "You really should get on these things, you know."

He quickly straightened out as he heard the click-click-click of her heels approach and put on his most serious "I'm rather disappointed you let this slide" expression as she walked towards him. The expression on her face was so disturbed that he couldn't help a stray nasal-snort of laughter, which he quickly covered by raising his hand to his mouth and pretending he was coughing.

"The exterminator is on his way," she said. "He said he'd be here Thursday afternoon. Shall I call him and move up the date?"

"No!" he hurriedly stated, perhaps a bit too fast. If Pepper showed the exterminator his little "nests," the exterminator would instantly know they weren't real and tell her that. The absolute last thing Tony Stark wanted was the exterminator to deep-six his fun. "Thursday is fine. –I'm- not the one who's afraid of them."

"I'm not afraid, Tony," she said, "I just find them disgusting."

"You're afraid," he teased, "of a little mouse."

"No, I'm not!" she answered angrily.

"You are afraid, you are afraid," he taunted, wriggling his fingers in her direction as though his hands were little mice scurrying at her and teasing, "squeak squeak!"

"Grow up!" she exclaimed. "I have work to do. Now about the wind farm…"

Tony was forced to spend the next two hours pretending to be interested in the economics of commercial scale wind power. Pepper was passionate about green energy, he discovered. She became extremely animated and her eyes twinkled at the fact he was suddenly showing an interest in her pet project. It was quite enjoyable having Pepper sit so close to him on the couch, their knees touching as she leaned in to give him paperwork. Pepper had been keeping him at a firm distance lately. He was quite content to invest two hours sitting there gazing absent-mindedly into her eyes and fantasizing about kissing her animated lips. He found the way Pepper touched his arm to emphasize a point or their fingers would brush whenever she passed over a piece of paperwork to be quite erotic.

Tony's stomach growled as lunch approached. God was punishing him for being a trickster and Pepper was too absorbed in selling her ideas about wind power to notice it was time to order takeout. Finally, he decided he would "pay the toll" and shut her up.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Yeah, okay. Make it happen," he stated. "Buy it. Build it. It's your baby. You're in charge."

"Really?" she exclaimed, crossing her hands in front of her heart and giving him a joyous smile like a little girl who had just been given a pony.

"Really… Now can we see about ordering some lunch?" he stated rather grumpily. Actually, he didn't feel too bad about caving in. Pepper had done a good job of convincing him the project wouldn't cost the company money, although it wouldn't make them any money, either. However, from a PR standpoint it was an excellent investment. Besides, the joyous expression on her face while she had sat knee-to-knee with him was worth a few hundred million dollars. Maybe he should buy her wind farms more often? That was the only reason he invested in art work. It wasn't like he had any clue what that modern art crap was supposed to represent.

"I'm really hungry right now," he stated, his mind turning back once again to his nefarious plan. "Could you please get some crackers or something to tide me over until the takeout arrives?"

"Yes, of course," Pepper stated, smiling. She was in a really good mood right now. She happily glided into the kitchen to prepare his little snack, unaware of the terror that lay within.

The moment her back was turned, Tony pulled the tiny remote control he had built and pushed the "on" button. Robomouse lay lurking like a B-grade horror movie at the bottom of the closet. Tony quietly snickered his most evil mad-scientist laugh and hit the execute button. So he didn't miss the fun, he followed her into the kitchen just as he heard her open the door, and exclaim:

"Oh, no, they got into the pantry, too!"

"What got into the pantry, Pepper?" he asked with complete innocence, coming up behind her like a ghost and murmuring over her shoulder into her ear to deliberately startle her. He was rewarded by her surprised jump.

"A mouse," she stated, her expression disturbed. "They're everywhere."

"Don't worry," he murmured in a husky voice, deliberately invading her personal space as he knew that would unnerve her further. "Iron man will protect you." Pepper gave him a nervous look that could only be described as "damsel in distress." He reached into his pocket and hit the start button. Robomouse ran out from the bottom of the pantry and ran right across her shoe, as programmed.

"Eeek!" she shrieked, stomping at it and throwing her arms up over her head as though she were being attacked by a machete-wielding psychopath. She turned and landed right in Tony's arms, the length of her body pressing against his as she froze there momentarily, face to face with him as he gave her an amused look. Time stood still as they lingered, Pepper hyperventilating and flushed, Tony's eyes darkening to a rich dark chocolate brown as he stared at her lips and held his breath to prolong the moment. Neither one of them moved.

"You know I'll always protect you," he murmured, his voice deepening in desire as he pondered whether Pepper would return his kiss or slap him if he attempted to do what he'd been dreaming about doing for months. Although he was baffled at what made Pepper tick, on some deep instinctive level, he understood this was something he had to let Pepper call the shots on. He held his breath, hoping, waiting for her to make her decision.

It was Pepper, as always, who pulled away, blushing deeply and looking very embarrassed. "S-sorry," she stammered. "It surprised me."

"That's okay," he smiled, disappointed. Not this time. There would be others. He would make sure of it. "I don't like them, either." He breached her personal space once more as he reached into the cupboard behind her and grabbed the colander he had strategically placed last night, casually tossing it like a horseshoe to land upside-down over the circling robomouse, who was scurrying around the kitchen in his pre-programmed pattern. "I'll bring it outside."

"Aren't you going to kill it?" she asked.

"Even mice have a right to exist," he quietly stated, slipping a piece of cardboard under the colander to keep the little robomouse in its "cage" and keep it out of her sight lest she look too closely. He suddenly felt sad that the game was over. "I'll let him go down by the cliffs," he finished. "He should be quite happy there."

Tony forgot all about the "nest" in Peppers shoe until, one day, several weeks later, he heard a blood curdling shriek coming from her office. He ran up the stairs as fast as he could, his heart racing in fear as he contemplated what terrible thing could have happened to her to cause her to scream like that. Then he saw her holding the shoe in her hand, her bare stocking feet suggesting she had stepped into and discovered the "nest" just as he had planned. He couldn't help himself. He started to guffaw, desperately trying to stifle his laughter so as not to anger her. As Pepper glared at him, he couldn't help himself. He burst out laughing, a deep side-splitting laugh that hurt. He was shaking so hard that he finally had to wrap his arms around his torso and bend over to keep from splitting his sides. Oh, god! That hurt!

Pepper glared and threw the shoe at him. He laughed harder. "I got to pee!" he exclaimed as tears of laughter ran down his face. He couldn't stop! Finally, Pepper's features softened and she stifled a snort. The next thing he knew, she started to giggle, then laugh as the absurdity of the moment carried her away. They held each other up, unable to control their laughter and afraid they would fall over and roll on the floor if they laughed any harder. Both kept trying to get things under the control, but then they would look at the others face and start cracking up again.

Quite some time later, out of pure exhaustion rather than any attempt at seriousness, they finally managed to get themselves composed. Tony picked up the shoe and said, "I'll take care of this for you."

"Yes, Mr. Stark, thank you," she smiled. "You're my hero."