Taking the upgraded armor out for a spin was Tony's way to relax. Flight was a freedom he had never felt before. He had never flown anything himself, never been a co-pilot, but the armor… being the pilot and the plane in one, it was more than an adrenaline rush. It was everything for him.
Today wasn't just for fun, thought. He wanted to test the P-Cells, this time under realistic battle conditions. While he would have liked nothing more than to go into a war zone and show those terrorists what he thought of them using his weapons, Tony had set up his own little playground over at Nellis. Bowman had just shrugged and shaken his head at the request, but he hadn't tried to argue against it. And since the Autobots were using Nellis as their link to their own base, having Iron Man test new armor was not out of the ordinary, really.
The flight took him an hour, but only because he dawdled. He activated his anti-radar shield and took the armor for an atmospheric spin. Above the clouds, without anyone watching him, Tony flew lazy arcs, tight turns and loops, and he laughed at the exhilaration he felt.
Jarvis luckily didn't call him on that. The AI was silent, just monitoring.
When he finally touched down in his private little test zone, Tony was grinning like an idiot. No one could understand what it felt like. This was only for him.
"Jarvis, fire up the P-Cells."
"Very well, sir."
The HUD lit up with new data and Tony found the upgrade working smoothly with the already existing programs. The P-Cells wouldn't act unless required to. They weren't just a thin layer of cells on the armor; they had been integrated into the molecularly bonded shielding, were part of the armor.
"Now let's see what we can do…"
Tony activated the small barrage of weapons he had installed in this out of the way location and immediately he had warnings coming in. He had been marked and the weapons system was ready to fire.
He grinned.
This would be fun.
Launching into the sky, he was immediately tracked and targeted.
Duck. Left. Right.
Fire.
Evade.
Small hit to the left shoulder.
Cutting it close to the ground.
Missile away, following him. Tight turn.
Left-right-left, repulsor blast.
The missile exploded in a small bloom of fire.
But Tony didn't have time to feel triumphant. The next battery of weapons fire headed his way and this time he met it head on. He wanted to test the armor's capabilities while under fire.
And fire there was.
Tony felt it batter against the outer armor, he saw the warnings flash up on the HUD, and he gritted his teeth as a missile strike sent him crashing into the ground. He got up, deactivating the program, and looked at the charred skin on his side. The golden and red coloring had been burned and there was a gash.
Suddenly something seemed to lance through him, cutting his chest apart. He gasped, his knees giving way. The very ground seemed to grow wavy and twisted around him. His mind buzzed with something akin to whispers.
The world around him went black.
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Eleven minutes had passed.
Tony lay on the ground, still completely in his armor, gazing almost stupidly at the HUD display. There were no more warnings about amour breaches.
The P-Cells had worked.
And they had almost depleted the arc reactor.
Well, shit.
Tony sat up with a groan and his hand brushed over the chest plate where the arc reactor glowed dimly. The HUD information told him that while it was reloading, it was only at thirty percent.
What the hell was going on with the P-Cells? The last simulations hadn't shown any kind of severe power depletion. The P-Cells didn't need all that much energy! He had modeled them after the Autobots' version, which was running on very low power unless a reconstruction was needed, and even then they wouldn't draw almost all available power.
Back to the drawing board.
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Tony gulped down some aspirin and sighed, closing his eyes. Damn this headache and damn his aching body as well! The pain had subsided a bit because of the medication, but it was still there. He had managed to ignore most of it and when he concentrated on his work he felt marginally better.
He was used to bruises and even bullet wounds, but this was more like the remnants of the flu. His joints were protesting most movement and he felt tired.
It didn't help when Pepper came down into the workshop, scowling at him at his obvious state of pain and no sleep, and handed him a cell phone.
"Banachek," she only said.
Tony was immediately alert. He took the phone and smiled as he greeted Tom Banachek.
"To what do I owe the honor?"
He winked at Pepper and she scowled more, pointedly looking at the charred armor and his ruffled looks. Tony ignored the non-verbal criticism because what he heard on the cell was the best news in weeks.
"You better reserve a parking space," he joked. "I'll be there yesterday."
"Good news?" Pepper asked neutrally.
"The best. Official invite to the Autobot base."
"How nice. You plan on a shower and sleep first?"
"Shower only. I can sleep on the way."
Pepper's lips were pressed into a fine line, her eyes reflecting the eye-roll she wasn't showing.
"Roddy, fire up your engine. We're going to visit your friends," Tony called as he headed for the stairs to make good of the shower promise.
And then he was out of ear shot.
Pepper looked at the obvious signs of Tony's armor tests, then glanced at Hot Rod.
"How bad was it this time?"
"It seems the P-Cells are working," Hot Rod replied. "But they deplete the arc reactor. Aside from that, I'm worried about Tony, Pepper. He hasn't slept properly and I think he's still fighting off flu symptoms."
"It takes more than the common flu to keep him down, Hot Rod."
"I noticed," came the wry answer.
"And it won't do any good mother-henning either," Pepper went on with a knowing air. "He'll just fight it all harder."
"That I noticed, too."
"So just keep an eye on him down here. I'll keep him from running into doors and lamp posts in the real world."
Hot Rod chuckled. "It's a deal."
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Tony was dizzy and felt like he was packed in wool. His head seemed to be three sizes too large and his body didn't really belong to him. Only with an immense effort was it possible for him to coordinate his movements and he was afraid that he would lose all control the next step. This was only getting worse, not better.
He wouldn't succumb to another round of the flu. It had had its chance and he didn't need it. With the flu he wouldn't be able to go into space and he would do almost all to be on board the Ghost-2.
He felt a little better after the shower and he improved on the way back down into the garage where Hot Rod was waiting. Pepper was nowhere to be seen, but that had been expected.
"Ready?" Tony asked.
The driver's door opened. "Ready."
"Then let's go."
He fell asleep fifteen minutes later and Hot Rod employed his holographic projection unit, replicating the whole interior and adding a driver.
Tony needed some rest.
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Watching Tony Stark work was… not exactly poetry in motion, but it was something special. Ex-Army Ranger Will Lennox had found that just sitting in the lab and watching the man was… amazing. Having him work together with Sam was downright eerie sometimes. Both men could confuse even a seasoned mech like Ratchet, or Ironhide, and Will had more than once remarked about that to his partner. Ironhide readily confessed that Stark was a unique person. Ratchet would add that the man was also highly erratic.
Tony worked without blueprints. He would draw schematics, he would work with the holographic sketching table, but the main work was done inside his very agile mind. Only if a design worked would he draw the schematics for everyone to access and read over. The rest was on his own personal 'hard drive'.
With Sam, matters were more physical because he used the computer units in the lab, but he rarely typed nowadays. He was so familiar with the tech around him, he accessed it with his mind. At first it had creeped out those who hadn't seen the young engineer work his 'magic'. Will himself had had to get used to a screen suddenly coming to life and strings of code appearing on it. Now it was almost normal.
Together the two men had started to redesign the Ghost-2 in a manner no one else would have been able to.
Ratchet had received a file from Stark Industries, Tony Stark personally, about two weeks earlier. It had contained the totally reworked plans of the Ghost-2, a set of modifications, several tests run on said modifications on a model created solely in cyberspace, as well as several notes on the performance of a small scale model Stark had built and tested. There were pages of footnotes relating to changes that needed to be made should the cargo lifted to the Ark exceed the combined weight of Optimus Prime and Ironhide, as well as possible emergency plans should the Ghost-2 bring back more cargo than it had lifted into space.
Ratchet had just stared at the files and shook his head.
"This is amazing," he had commented when he had shown everything to Ironhide and Optimus Prime.
"Especially considering that no one asked him to do it," Prime had agreed.
No one really had. Tony had simply done it. Spare time, he had claimed.
Will knew better. Tony Stark simply wasn't a man to ignore a challenge and the Ghost-2 had proven to be one.
"This is me being helpful!" the industrialist genius argued. "Why is everyone immediately suspicious?" "Maybe because you've tried every trick in the book to get in on the next mission," Will replied amiably. "Almost every trick," came the reply. Tony grinned at him over the video-conference link. "I still have some really good aces up my sleeves." "Like the reworked Ghost-2 model?" "I had some time on my hands," was the dismissive reply, but there was no missing the excited glint in the dark eyes. "Sure, Tony." How a man who was the CEO of an international company, who had just turned said company around and had proven it worked, still had time for all Tony did… it was beyond Will. But he had that time. Probably less sleep, too. And Tony Stark was trying to help them with the second mission. Sure, he wanted in on it, but he was offering payment.
Sam and the other engineers had checked the plans, had tweaked them some more, had sent them back – and had received an email an hour after sending Tony their changes that, while polite, told them that their changes were crap and would surely crash the ship.
So Katie and Finch had set out to prove their ideas were viable. The model had behaved wonderfully until it had blown apart because of a calculation error.
Stark had come to the base immediately after his 'invitation' and ever since he and Sam hadn't really left the lab. Will had joined them as a spectator and sometimes as an assistant. From Prime he knew that Tony was now officially part of the mission and would be aboard the Ghost-2. Stark was also funding some of the research and construction with his own money. He was truly paying for this ticket to the Moon. In work and in cash. Banachek wasn't openly happy about it, but he wasn't opposing it either.
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Days should consist of forty-eight hours. At least.
Tony scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling tired, exhausted. He couldn't remember a decent night of sleep. His mind was occupied with the P-Cells, Extremis, the Ghost-2, and sometimes even his company. He almost laughed. And now, just before he had left Nevada because Pepper had forcibly reminded him five times that he had a meeting with some idiot who only wanted to deal with the CEO of a company and never with a representative, Banachek had reminded him to get back to him on his proposal for a new board member of Stark Industries. Banachek knew that one of the old guys was leaving, that several were about to leave in the future, and he wanted someone there who was connected to Project and the Autobots.
Stark downed the glass of lemon water and grimaced. He had removed almost all of the alcoholic drinks from the private jet and had kicked the strippers off, too. Well, the normal cabin crew still remained. It felt like a serious company jet now; eerie.
Calling up the file of the person in question, Tony tried to concentrate. John Keller, former Secretary of Defense, now working for Project. He was a good choice for SI, but Tony wasn't all that sure yet how much of SI he wanted to hand over to Banachek to control. So far he had kept it all separate. If he wanted to pour more of himself into other projects, into Cybertronian research and into Iron Man, he had to make a few choices.
Tony's cell phone rang and he looked at the display. Pepper.
"Yes, mom?" he asked, sounding bored.
"Mr. Gregory called. He cancelled the appointment," Pepper could be heard.
"Son of a bitch. He did that the last time, too!"
"Shall I take him off the customer list?"
"Put him on the wait list for my representative to meet with him," Tony ground out. "He got a second chance. I'm not desperate for his money."
"Five million?" Pepper reminded him.
"Five million reasons not to let him play me." He snapped the phone shut, then pressed the intercom button. "Harry, turn around. We're going home."
"Yes, Mr. Stark," the pilot answered.
The plane changed course and Tony gestured at the buxom blonde waiting on him to get him a whiskey. She smiled brilliantly, professionally, did her little 'Yes, Mr. Stark, immediately' routine and Tony turned to the window.
Sometimes it sucked to be him.
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The jet touched down an hour later and Tony had to smile as he discovered Happy waiting for him.
"Hot Rod busy?" he asked as he got into the Rolls.
The mech had returned on his own to the mansion after Tony had gone to Nellis to board his private jet for the appointment with Gregory.
"He suggested I pick you up to let you sleep on our way back," Happy answered.
"Baby-sitter," Tony muttered, but he had to smile.
The Rolls pulled away from the airfield and out onto the road. Tony felt the exhaustion settle more heavily and he closed his eyes.
"Wake me," he only said.
"Of course, Sir."
The hum of the Rolls' engine lulled him into sleep.