"So…many…shoes…" Tony muttered, his right eye twitching. Rhodey nodded in agreement and shivered.

"How can she have tried on so man pairs of high-heels and still have more to try on?" Rhodey muttered, pacing back and forth in the small store beside the wooden bench on which Tony sat. Tony propped his elbow on his thigh, then set his chin in the palm of his hand.

"This is torture, Rhodey. What did we do to deserve this?"

"Oh, shut up," Pepper called as she walked back into the room wearing yet ANOTHER pair of high-heels. "How do these look?"

"To tell you the truth, they don't look much different than the ones you tried on before them," Tony mumbled. "Or the ones before them, or the ones before them, or the ones before them…"

"Pepper, we're guys. You do realize this is torture for us, right?" Rhodey told Pepper, stepping in front of her and folding his arms.

"Yup!" Pepper grinned.

"I'm seriously going to freak if I see another pair of shoes. How are you planning to pay for all of these, anyway?" Tony asked, staring at the growing pile of shoes beside the bench. There had to be fifty pairs of them, each around sixty dollars.

"With your money, of course!" Pepper chirped. Then she glanced at her heels on her feet. "Hm, I wonder if they have these in pink. That would be adorable! Ooh, I have to check! Miss!" Pepper called, running, or attempting to in her heels, after a store worker. Tony looked at Rhodey.

"Run?"

"Run."

Both boys bolted for the store exit that emptied into the main part of the mall complex. Rhodey had almost made it to the door when he heard a strangled shout from behind him. He didn't stop to look around until he had made it into the mall. Then he turned around-and saw Pepper hauling Tony back into the store by the back of his red shirt. Tony grabbed hold of the store's doors, keeping Pepper from pulling him any farther into the store.

"Help me!" he mouthed, but Rhodey shrugged empathetically. Tony glared at him before, with a shout, he was pulled into the store to endure hours of watching a certain redhead try on shoes.

"I think I'll go to the arcade," Rhodey told himself as he strode across the mall to the arcade. In the background, he could hear Tony screaming.