"Pep, do you know any words that start with-"
A low growl emanated from her lips, a sound so at odds with her sharp, attractive features. For a short moment Tony had to wonder if someone had replaced his personal assistant with an angry badger.
Probably Happy. The man was shifty...
...unless it was Justin Hammer.
Or Pepper wasn't really replaced with an angry badger but a complex cybernetic sex robot sent to seduce him, then suck his brains out through a straw.
On second thought, that'd be kinda hot.
And then she brought out her serious face, and ripped his StarkPhone from his grasp, "Tony, this is important. Maybe it's not important to you, or maybe you're not interested, but this is your company. At least appear to be interested."
"I am interested," Tony countered, slipping on a grin. The same grin that had appeared on countless tabloids over the years, also the same grin that woos so many willing women to his bed. Or maybe that's just the fact that's he's one of the richest men on the planet.
He honestly prefered to think it was due to tales of performance getting around in the inner circles of super-modeldom.
Tony continued, "In fact, I am very interested. Super interested even."
Pepper cocked an eyebrow, "Really?"
"Really," Tony repeated, "And I understand where you're coming from. You're hurt, you feel betrayed, and I understand. And really, I'm glad you're showing such an interested in the affairs of things-"
"Are you honestly trying to turn this around on me?"
"-but I can assure you, that my desire to kick Rhodey's ass at Words with Friends is in no way affected my ability to listen to you rant and rave about the state of the company-"
Her face twisted into something unfitting of a gorgeous woman like herself, but before she could do more than open her mouth in protest, he swallowed her words up as he continued undeterred.
"-so if you want, quiz me," Tony said, then added as an afterthought, "Though it hurts my widdle heart that you don't trust me." Hell, he even brought out the puppy dog eyes.
"You are not seriously pouting."
"I could add in a single tear of sorrow if that would sway you."
"Don't make me punch you."
The pair made their way across the tarmac, Pepper's heels aggressively clacking as she started on her laundry list of topics to quiz him on. In hindsight, he was kicking himself for saying she could quiz him. Plus, she had kept his phone so the boredom of walking someplace without an electronic device of some sort in-hand was coming full force.
So he concentrated instead on the clicking of her shoes against the pavement, wondering why she'd be hauling him to the airport in a pencil skirt and heels. Then he recognized the small army of reporters and paparazzi awaiting his arrival.
That would explain the heels.
Her elbow drove into his side, and he yelped in surprise. Thankfully no one had caught that little bit of girlish squeaking on camera. Her eyes locked on him, "You spaced out again," her eyes rolled, "Like always," with a sigh, she flicked the surface of her tablet, bringing up the design specs for Stark Industries latest toys, "Give me a rundown what we're demoing in South Korea."
Without a pause, he retorted, "We're dusting off the old Jericho designs. Standard armament are six rapid fire, long range, anti-anything missiles-"
"-so compared to your rate of fire on conventional artillery, that's a major improvement. Same goes for the use of multiple kinds of ordnance at once, you could decimate an armored division and an infantry company with the same battery. Designate the targets using satellite imagery, and boom, you can clear the bad guys off your lawn without ever leaving your easy chair. The targeting software deals with the rest on the fly."
"And what happens if the targeting software is rendered inoperable?" to his credit, the South Korean general spoke better english than most, he could even pronounce L's. Which for Tony was a spectacular development to toss up on his Twitter, just like all the other spectacular developments that popped up on his Twitter.
"Well, the system is designed specifically not to fail. However, in the event of a failure of that sort, as long as you've got boys on the ground to designate targets you'll be able to guide them in. Of course, then it's not nearly as fire-and-forget, but stuff still ends up exploding."
All things went according to plan, hands were shaken, and backs were patted. In short, everything went without a hitch. The general would happily await his first shipment of missiles - which would be arriving by the end of the week - and hold a 'trial run' of sorts before deciding if he wished to sign a full-contract for a small armada of Jericho missiles. Considering who designed said missiles, Tony was reasonably assured that Stark Industries would be receiving a bulk order by the end of the week.
It was a good day to be Tony Stark.
Then again, it's always a good day to be Tony Stark.
Especially when Tony Stark happens to be the owner of a damn fine private jet with a host of stewardesses in semi-revealing outfits, and that's before they undid a few buttons and hiked up their skirts. Nevermind a bar serving quality drinks of similar caliber to the best in the world.
Still, after seeing more fun-mounds than the guys behind Girls Gone Wild, it became sort of an everyday occurrence. A very pleasing occurrence but nevertheless an occurrence. That and his self-control was much stronger than anyone ever gave him credit for, he was a womanizer, but that didn't mean he just groped every breast in sight. He asked permission first.
So while one of the stewardesses offered him a carefully prepared drink, he accepted it with practiced ease while his other hand calmly flicked through his contacts. Which, despite all his liaisons and the fact he ran one of America's top businesses, was quite short. Then again, with the amount of women he only met once their wasn't a whole lot of reason to retain contact information. Selecting Pepper from the list he tapped the call icon and pressed the phone to his ear, gesturing for the stewardess acting as DJ to bring her music down to a volume conducive to conversation.
"Hey, Pep, I just-"
Pepper interluded with a string of incomprehensible gibberish before she's awake enough to render human speech, "Tony," he can almost hear her squinting at the clock, "It's - why are you calling me at three in the morning?"
"I just wanted to call and tell you everything went fine," he answers, sitting his drink down beside him before plucking the toothpick-and-olive ensemble from the glass. With olive and stick in hand, he turns to the stewardess seated next to him on the bench. He gets his confirmation when she leans in close and wraps a pair of luscious lips around the olive and pulls it free of it's imprisonment. Tony notes that she is indeed a woman of considerable oral talents.
"You never call," Pepper grumbles through the phone, "What did you do this time?"
"What makes you think I've done something? Maybe I'm just calling in to check on my favorite personal assistant."
"Now you're trying to butter me up," she murmurs, "You're up to something, and I know it, I just don't know-" a yawn cuts her thought in half before she resumes, "-what."
"Hide the breakables, Pepper, I'm coming home."
"Mhmmm.."
Tony Stark's private jet wasn't built for speed, no, it's built for comfort. With that notion in mind, the much heavier, louder, and less smooth flying plane was able to catch up, managing an intercept course. A converted military cargo plane from a time when the United States and China were on much better terms, the heavy plane continued to lumber after the smaller, sleeker, Stark Industries customized aircraft.
Situated in the rear of the plane, stood a row of six men, all dressed in combat gear with submachine guns strapped across their chests. Each man was presently in the process of adjusting their oxygen masks, having a few scant minutes until the jet below was in position for their next move.
Raza, the team leader for this mission, glanced up as the light to his left flickered to life, an eerie green falling over the six. He nodded at his team and moved to the edge of the ramp.
And then he jumped.
For a few short seconds he was falling unassisted, plummeting like a rock. A second passed. And then another, and then, he yanked the handle on his harness. From the pack on his back, his parachute exploded into existence, slowing his descent considerably. Now came the hard part of landing successfully on the plane, and forcefully taking it over.
He ditched his chute just short of the wing, letting his momentum carry him the rest of the distance. His boots danced across the surface of the wing as he forced himself down, despite the air current ripping at him, he managed to slam his glove down on the wing and his momentum was stopped painfully with a sudden jerk. Despite his arm's desire to tear out of it's socket, the nano-glove stayed glued to the surface. With a grunt, Raza brought his other hand up onto the wing, and once more the glove stuck firmly in-place.
The nano-gloves ran on a (to Raza) magical technology based around the same basic concept as to how a Gecko scaled walls, allowing the user to plant his hands on a surface and with a slight clench of his/her fingers, firmly glue themselves to the wall. Originally designed with the United States military in mind, a few sets of the gloves had gotten 'misplaced' and wound up in the hands of his benefactor.
The fact that Stark Industries was written across the back of the gloves only served to add some dramatic irony to the whole hijacking.
The other commandos latched onto the plane as well, assembling with Raza near the wing. With his team ready, Raza spread the specialized breaching charge along the surface of the plane, making sure it was good and secure before taking a few large steps back. The charges were designed to only explode inward, but Raza wasn't inclined to test this theory while standing on the wing of a plane flying at 50,000 feet.
The charges exploded, ripping a relatively symmetrical circle in the planes high-quality metal skin. And the team of terrorists quickly made their way inside, ripping their submachine guns from their kit as they landed inside the plane.
Up to his neck with half-naked women in the back of the plane, Tony barely heard the dull whump of the explosives over the sensual purring in his ear. By the time he'd fought through the wall of stewardesses trying to bury him alive, his security team was rushing in to secure him.
This wasn't good.
Raza gestured for two of his men to branch off and secure the cockpit. A dirty task, but an important one. No, not just important, the most important. If they couldn't secure the cockpit and land the plane in friendly territory, the whole mission would be a pointless endeavor. The two men broke off, while Raza and the rest of his squad pushed towards the rear of the plane. They had a solid idea where Tony Stark should be, so they'd sweep the plane, and force his back up against the wall.
Raza and his team encountered only minor resistance initially, Stark having an overall rather small security detail with him - and they weren't exactly expecting a mid air hijacking, so surprise was also assisting Raza in his war. After the first trio of men in suits dropped to the floor in bloody heaps, the majority of the team materialized around every corner. Raza and his team, however, had come prepared. Alongside their body armor, Nano-gloves, and submachine guns - they also brought a healthy number of flash grenades. For every pocket of resistance, Raza's team would deploy a flashbang, and then sweep through the stunned security with overwhelming firepower.
Eventually, only one door remained, and Raza and his men stacked up.
In movies, Tony always assumed the slow-motion effect was put into place to make things more badass. Thus, when games used breaching charges, shit was slowed down so it'd be more awesome - and to give the player more time to shoot people in the face. The only problem was, in fiction, the hero is never on the wrong side of the door. Soap MacTavish never had a door explode in his face, he always blew up doors in other peoples' faces.
So when Tony's door to his private part of the plane exploded into bits of shrapnel and plane bits, he jumped roughly a foot and a half in the air. Favreau, one of Tony's team, snapped up his pistol training it's barrel on the remnants of the doorway.
A quiet tink brought the eerie silence, a black cylinder spiraling across the floor before bumping into one of Tony's guard's fine Italian shoes. Favreau spun on his heel, wrapping a massive arm around Tony's waist and forcing him facedown into the carpet. Favreau's heavy frame immediately following, pressing down on Tony.
The flashbang exploded, and being a quality Stark Industry's design that got eventually sold by the military to the lowest bidder - the thing did a sufficient job of knocking everybody on their collective asses and leaving them with a painful ringing in their ears.
Favreau rolled off of Tony, who immediately let out a held breath. Favreau, fighting the effects of the 'bang' part of the flashbang was dealing with a total loss of hearing - if he'd been facing the grenade, he'd also be dealing with a case of blindness. Thus was the case for Downey, who was stumbling around trying to fight both a case of blindness, and a screwed up inner ear leaving him essentially worthless to the team. Paltrow was seemingly doing okay herself, though she was using Tony's bed to steady herself as she tried to regain her footing.
Raza was the first through the door, snapping up his submachine gun as he cleared the doorway. His sights centered on the man nearest the door, he clearly was quite stunned and made an easy target. A short burst of automatic fire ripped through his fine suit jacket, puffs of red exploding out of his back as he staggered back against the bullets, he flopped back onto Stark's fine linens in a bloody heap.
The woman behind him shouted something, but with his brain running ten-thousand miles per minute, Raza wasn't able to translate her words. With relative assurance that his number two would easily deal with the female, Raza snapped his submachine gun to the supine security member and pulled the trigger.
Unable to actually assist, Tony could only really watch as Favreau was riddled with a long burst of weapons fire, and Paltrow collapsed to the floor as bullets ripped through her torso. Paltrow dropped on the other side of the bed, out of sight, but Tony already knew she was dead before she hit the ground. Favreau was entirely still aside from the slight rise and fall of his chest to indicate he was still breathing, albeit small, shallow, ragged breaths.
Tony made a mad grasp for Favreau's sidearm, deciding he wasn't going to let the tabloids run articles about how he just rolled over and died when lunatics slaughtered his staff and tried to take over his plane. He'd pull his best President Harrison Ford in Air Force One, and go down shooting.
Acknowledging Stark's blatant grab for a dropped gun, Raza took two long strides forward and smashed his boot into the weapon designer's outstretched arm. Raza made sure the barrel of his submachine gun was all but touching Stark's nose, a very pointed nonverbal statement.
The Mandarin would be quite pleased with their success.