Puzzles of the mind.

I do not own Iron Man or the rest of the Avengers gang.

Chapter 1

Tony was having a perfect night alone with Pepper; it had been about half a year since the incident with the chuitari invasion. In those month the Stark tower was repaired and reopened as the Avenger tower. Of cause it came with the drawback of having to house the superheroes giving Tony a headache as the team settled in to their own floor. Since it was still technically Tony's building that meant that he could pick the penthouse floor. He had also tried to theme each room the liking of the individual. Although each had a separate room on different floors; they still had to share the kitchen and entertainment room between themselves. Tony of cause used the excuse of since he was the only one with a relationship the he had a separate floor for himself and Pepper. Whereas the rest of the avengers had to share the next few floors below him.

There had been a few incidents that had been really embarrassing for Pepper while Tony shrugged it off saying things like that happened, one of the most embarrassing one was when Bruce had walked in on them in Tony's lab while they were having mind blowing sex as Tony would say. Which prompted Bruce to walk straight out again with a blank face, the oblivious pair didn't even notice him enter or leave. The other avengers minus Tony of cause found him sitting there staring at the wall with no expression on his face it had taken a good half an hour for him to speak again but he never looked at Pepper again without blushing. Jarvis solved this problem by locking any door while they were like that or he would warn the others not to enter at that particular time and come back an hour or so later.

As Tony relaxed back into his sofa; Pepper leaned back resting her head on his chest just above the ark reactor. They had finished a nice dinner and were ready to watch a movie probably something involving with Will Smith as Pepper had a slight crush on him. They had managed to watch about twenty minutes or so before Tony's phone went off with the tune from an ACDC song. Noticing that Pepper was asleep on him he quickly saw that it was Shield calling him causing him to frown as he was supposed to have a night off. He switched it off. He would have to have a word with Fury about the definition of what a night off means.

Tony felt Pepper's phone on the couch vibrate as a call came in. Now he was starting get annoyed knowing that it was ether Fury or Hill ringing to get Pepper to send him off to the helicarrier for another mission or something. Just to try and prove a point he switched her phone off too and placed them on the side table without waking Pepper up. He was sure that they could survive without him for one night without the world coming to an end. Hopefully they would get the message and leave them alone for the night. Luck however was not on his side as Jarvis voice alerted him to Fury's constant attempts to contact him. Sighing Tony tried to slip out underneath Pepper without waking her he failed miserably as she opened her eyes and looked up at him with a pouting face. He knew that she was not going to like what he had to say so instead he hugged her tight not wanting to let her go again.

Finally releasing her from the hug he said to Jarvis. "Prepare the suit."

"At once sir" The AI replied.

"Tony do you have to go?" Pepper sighed holding onto his arm preventing him from leaving.

"Yeah Pep I do. But don't worry I will be back before you know it. I will give Fury a piece of my mind don't you worry." Tony said.

"Be sure that you do." She said letting go of his arm and watched him walk out of the room.

Going through the start procedure, Tony asked Jarvis to contact Fury knowing that he better check in before Fury has a fit. Fury answered with the usual annoyed voice.

"There had better be a really good reason that you have been ignoring my phone calls tonight Mr Stark."

"Yeah there is. I told you that tonight was my night off with Pepper. It's not my fault that you didn't listen." Tony said slightly annoyed at Fury for inferring that this was his entire fault.

"I had no other choice as the rest of the avengers were already there and are having difficulty containing the robots. Considering that it robotics were kind of your area of expertise we figured that you might be useful in helping defeat them." Fury explained.

Knowing that what Fury said made sense Tony couldn't fault the man for calling him away from his beloved Pepper. But just because it made sense didn't mean that he would go easy on the man as he really was having a great night in with Pepper before being called away. Oh he would make the one eyed pirate pay later. As the ironman suit assembled around Tony he was thinking the best way to go about this. Should he contact the team before anything else or should he just blast his way in to the fray.

Getting Fury on the earpiece he asked what kind of robots they were and who had sent them in the first place turns out that they had dealt with them before. The Doom bots sent by Dr Doom had attacked the USA a few months ago. Most people thought that the good Dr was defeated but what they didn't count on was his connections with some rich people which managed to get him released from prison. Instead of being rehabilitated he must have gone ahead and built these instead. Joy.

It turns out that the com units that the team were using were being jammed so Fury couldn't tell them that he was coming. Hopefully when he flew closer to the battle he would be able to contact them and see what the situation is like. Flying closer Tony could see the smoke cloud that indicated that there was the battle was he could see the Hulk smashing away down below. He didn't see anyone else as he flew closer to the centre of the battle taking out some doom bots as he went with his repulses.

Trying to get a fix on the other team members he tried the coms finding that they were still being jammed. Fuck! Now what? Should I waste time meeting up with Cap and the others or should I just go straight to the source of the problem. Yeah let's just take out the controller so I can go back to Pepper and try to forget about everything except for her.

"JARVIS do a scan of the area and check for any signal pertaining to the Doom bots, oh and see what you can do about the coms" Tony asked the AI. Where the fuck was everyone?

"Yes sir connecting to the oracle grid now." The AI replied.

As the AI searched the area for any sign of the signal origan Tony was busy fighting of the hoard of Doom bots that were in his immediate area. Still having no contact with the team was making him edgy. What if one of them were injured or needed help him had no way of knowing. Shaking his head he waited for JARVIS to get back to him with the information that he needed but until then he continued to destroy all the bots that came at him.

"Sir there is a positive match to the signal used by the Doom bots; it's in a building 1km to your right. There is an indication that there are people guarding the device but there is no way to know how many there might be sir." JARVIS piped up.

"Just in time J." Tony said.

As the information filtered across Tony's heads up display; he set a course heading towards the building holding the device he needed to destroy. Getting his first real look at the building he could see that it was several stories' high apartment building that was derelict and made of bricks. Engaging the heat senses on his HUD Tony saw that there were at least 20 or so people though out the building, two at the entrance of the building and the rest were situated on the second floor. How Dr Doom managed to get them to work for him Tony didn't know but he wouldn't go easy on them spotting a window that he could fit through Tony headed into the building at full speed smashing though the window showering the ground below.

Immediately upon entering the building he was shot at with machine guns, this whole situation was starting to annoy him, why did this have to happen when he was having a great night with Pepper. Getting a shot off at the direction of the computers set up to scramble the com signal and disable the Doom bots, Tony didn't get a chance to know if he hit anything important as he was inundated with both Doom bots and the people in the building guarding the device. Fighting them off had his power steadily declining as he shot of his unibeam to dislodge the doom bot clinging to the front. He would need to get another reactor when this was all over.

As he was fighting he didn't see the Doom bot sneaking up on him from behind, the first indicator that there was something wrong was the grinding metal sound and searing pain as the bot ripped parts of the back off his iron man suit and managing to get a claw in. Powering his thrusters he rammed straight backwards and into the wall dislodging the bot from his back. Groaning Tony quickly turned and fired a shot off spitting the bot that injured him in half. He knew that he needed to get his back seen too but first he needed to destroy all the electronics in the room, there just seemed to be an endless supply of the bots. The worst thing was that he didn't know if Dr Doom was around the building somewhere or was he out there fighting the rest of his team.

The rest of Doom's people fell easily to his shots, the Doom bots not so much. Not giving up he ploughed through the last ten remaining bots leaving him all alone in the room. Making his way over to the control panel he searched though the data to see if he could track where Dr Doom had set up his operation but with no luck. Taking a few steps backwards he held up both his hands and let of a couple of shots with his repulses straight at the control panel. What he wasn't counting on was that there was one doom bot still functioning, it made its way up behind Tony and just before the shots destroyed the control panel the Doom bot latched itself onto Tony's helmet and squeezed.

Shooting pain ran though out his head as his helmet was crushed inwards cutting into his head, giving a yell of pain Tony fell down to one knee and clutched his head in his hands. Unfortunately what he had no way of knowing, was that there was a built in self-destruct that was triggered by the destruction of the control panel, a little revenge from the Doctor if anyone destroyed it. The bombs were designed to bring the building down with the person trapped underneath it. Any normal person that wasn't wearing armour would probably be killed, so since Tony was wearing his Iron Man suit he didn't instantly become crushed to death.

The instant that Tony destroyed the control panel, there was a rumble as the building shook from the explosives that were triggered. A few seconds later the floor that he was standing on collapsed sending Tony yelling as he fell with the rest of the building coming down on him, not that Tony was too aware of what was going on as he was in a haze of pain. When Tony came to all he could see was black, he couldn't move a single finger let alone a leg or an arm. Panicking Tony started to try and struggle but it was impossible when everything ached and nothing moved. He could barely breathe as the crushing weight could be felt even with the suit on; oh I am going to kill Fury when I got out of this.

"Jarvis are you there?" Tony groaned.

"…."

"Jarvis?" Tony asked again.

"…Syst…..Error….shut…own." Jarvis's said.

"Oh don't do that…come on Jarvis; Jarvis? Fuck!" Tony shouted.

Fuck my helmet must be damaged too much; I need to get a message to the team and let them know that I'm under here. Groaning he tried to keep his eyes open but the blood lose and the pain was too much, he lost the fight to stay conscious as everything went black his last thoughts was Pepper is going to kill me.

AN: I hoped you liked the beginning, I will continue to post them as I write them. Please tell me what you think as I love reviews. To all those people waiting on the sequel to Time Warp, I'm still writing it so don't worry I haven't forgotten you. Till next time.

Mushushy.