Sorry I've been gone for so long, but I'm back and can hopefully update a little more often. I make no promises when though, because that rarely works out. Hope you enjoy!

Anna waited in the workshop for her father to return from his conversation with Obadiah. After the catastrophe that Tony liked to call a press conference, Anna was questioning a lot about her father and what had happened while he was gone. She trusted him in his decision to shut down the weapons manufacturing division, despite it being the main purpose of Stark Industries, but now she wanted to know what his next step was.

She tinkered on some random circuit boards that were laying in a scrap pile on the end of one of the desks as she waited patiently, ACDC blaring through the speakers as she worked. Finally, after who knows how long, Tony walked into the workshop.

Anna looked at him expectantly and he didn't even look back at her. Rolling her eyes, she called out to him, "Well?"

"Well, what?" he answered back, trying to look innocent and oblivious to the unspoken question hanging in the air.

"What happened? What happened at the weapons demonstration? What happened when you disappeared? What happened with your conversation with Obadiah? Just, what happened?! You've been back here for a few hours' tops and we haven't really spoken yet. I was so worried about you!"

Tony made his way over to his daughter and sat on a wheeled chair across from her. "We had just finished the weapons demonstration for the Jericho missile and loaded back into the Humvees to head back to base when we were attacked. During the attack, I was hit with some bomb shrapnel and it almost reached my heart, but I'll get more into that later," he said as he noticed the horrified look on his daughter's face. "I woke up in a cave with a man named Yinsen, who helped save my life when I was brought back from the attack. The people who took me wanted me to build them their own Jericho and they had other Stark weapons as well. Over the next few months, Yinsen and I devised a plan to escape and that is why I'm here now."

Anna's horrified look quickly changed to one of confusion as well as having a hint of annoyance thrown in. "That isn't the whole story. You can't lie to me; I know all of your tells because I have the same ones. If you can't trust me, then who can you trust, dad." She didn't call him 'dad' very often, or at least not lately up until his disappearance. She had usually just called him Tony like everyone else. A small gesture such as calling him 'dad' reminded him that she was right. She was his daughter. His family. He was home, not in some cave in Afghanistan being held by terrorists and being forced to build a missile.

His daughter was also like no other. She was brilliant and strong-willed; a genuinely good person all around. She must have gotten that from her mother.

Anna stared at him as he stayed quiet, thinking everything over. She sighed before speaking again softly, "How are you not dead right now?"

Tony did not hesitate in his answer, knowing that he should tell her everything, "When they took me to the cave, the shrapnel was almost to my heart. Yinsen, the other man who was being held there, managed to create a magnet charged by a car battery to keep the shrapnel from going any deeper. After I had woken up, the two of us worked together to build something better." Tony paused there, pulling up his shirt to show his daughter what he managed to build while captured.

"Is that an arc reactor?!" she exclaimed in awe of the miniature version of the large arc reactor from back at Stark labs. Tony simply looked at her, not answering, knowing that she knew exactly what is was. "That's amazing! But, how did you manage to make one so small? No—Wait don't answer that just yet. I have one more question I want you to answer first. How did you escape?"

Tony looked at her and smirked. "That gets into what I need your help with. I'll explain as we go, I promise but first," he tapped the reactor that glowed under his shirt, "I need you to help me upgrade this. You are good with magnets, aren't you?"

Anna gave her father a curious look before matching his smirk with her own, "What can I do to help?"

"I'm going to need your expertise."

"Alright," Jake replied from the other end of the line with a chuckle, "Keep talking. I like where this is going."

Anna smiled and rolled her eyes, even though her friend couldn't see it, "What I'm about to say is some very sensitive information and I'm trusting you as my best friend to keep it to yourself, alright?"

"Oookay, this sounds important and even a little dangerous now. If it's dangerous, I may have to charge you for my services."

"Oh please, you live for danger. Or at least, that's what you told that blonde girl on spring break in Ibiza last year. Unless you are truly just chicken shit and lied, just like how you lied about everything else you told her."

"I didn't say I lived for danger, I said danger was my middle name. And I did not lie to her," Jake tried to defend, but his voice got slightly higher telling Anna that he was indeed lying.

"Liar. You just said that you told her danger was your middle name, which it isn't, is it Jacob Albert Hall? What else did you tell her again? That you were an up-and-coming DJ that was checking out the international scene after hitting it big in the States."

"Alright, Annabel Marie Stark, I may have said that but I mean, even though you seem to have a knack for knowing when people are lying, I am obviously a pretty good liar because she believed me."

"She only believed you because she was wasted! If I'm remembering correctly, he boyfriend also thought that you were a liar," she said as she thought about the muscled guy who socked Jake right in the jaw when he caught him coming on to his girlfriend.

"No, her boyfriend just thought I was an ass for hitting on his girlfriend."

"And he was right."

"Can we get back to the issue at hand? You had some super-secret, classified info to tell me?" Jake started again, changing the subject.

"Fine. So my dad was telling me about how he was captured and about how this terrorist group, called the Ten Rings, which I discovered through my research on the subject, had Stark weapons in their arsenal. I want to know how exactly they got our weapons. The more I think about what my dad told me the more suspicious I get about the whole thing. The Ten Rings wanted my dad to build them a Jericho missile, and they just so happen to capture him the day he demonstrates it to the military. It was the first demonstration and only a handful of people knew that he was going who are also connected to the company. I smell a rat, and I want to know who it is."

"Well," Jake dragged out, thinking all the information over, "If you really think that someone is supplying the Ten Rings with Stark Industries weapons, then I would look into the board. The executives on the board are probably the only ones that knew of the weapons demonstration was taking place exactly on that date at that time, and they're the only ones that could even possibly arrange a shipment to the Ten Rings under the table." Anna listened to Jake's logic and found herself agreeing more and more. "And even though he's supposed to be your dad's mentor and partner, I wouldn't dismiss Obadiah as a possibility. You've always thought the guy was kind of… well, off."

"You're right," Anna agreed immediately, "Everyone is a position of power could be behind this even Obi, which is why I want you to hack Stark Industries servers."

"What?! You want me to hack your family's own company?"

"Yes, I can access the servers from the inside and then lower security enough for you to get in from the outside and take a look around the board and Obadiah's files. I would do it myself, but if anything happens, I don't want them to know I'm on to them. You're far enough removed from the situation that it may take them some time to connect the dots. I mean, if anything happens, we can just say that my dad and I wanted you to test the security and see if any hackers could get into the system." Anna paused, knowing that it was a lot to ask. "Listen, you don't have to do it. It's a lot to ask and definitely not a fool-proof pla—," Jake cut her off.

"I'll do it. I live for danger after all," he replied in a joking tone. "I'll update you on what I find when I get into town in a couple of weeks for the benefit."

"Sounds good. Text me your arrival time, and I'll make sure to get there in time to pick you up."

"Alright, I'll see ya." Anna was just about to hang up when Jake continued, "And be safe Anna."

"You too."

Anna sighed, trying to shake off the solemn tone of the conversation she just had with her best friend. Deciding to take a break from playing Nancy Drew, she left her room and headed for the kitchen to grab a can of Pepsi before making her way to the workshop.

Halfway down the stairs, she ran into Pepper. "Oh, hey Pep! What's wrong with your hand?" she asked, noticing how the woman held her hand away from her body.

"Hello, Anna. Oh, nothing. I just need to wash it. Your father had me help him change out his reactor with a new one. I'm never doing it again," Pepper replied seriously, with a slight nervous laugh at the end. "Next time he needs help with that kind of stuff, he can ask you," she finished before continuing up the stairs.

Anna laughed to herself. She wasn't surprised her father took it upon himself to scar Pepper, when she was too busy doing other things.

She entered the workshop to see Tony ordering Dum-E around, getting the robotic arm to clean up his work benches. The seventeen-year-old couldn't help but roll her eyes at that. If he would just do it himself, it would get done ten times faster than him ordering Dum-E around to do it.

"So, I heard you scarred Pepper for life," Anna started without greeting.

"Hey, if anyone was scarred, it was me. I went into cardiac arrest!" he defended.

"Why didn't you just ask me to help you? I helped you update the reactor; I could've helped put it in. At least then, there would've been a smaller chance of it getting messed up. No offense to Pepper, but this science and engineering stuff isn't really her thing."

"You were busy," he answered simply, not looking at her.

"I call bullshit. Me being busy has never stopped you from having me help you on new weapons blueprints, or hand you a wrench while you're under the cars, or getting you whatever from the kitchen." She paused for a second, gauging his reaction, which remained innocent. "No, you just wanted an opportunity to flirt with Pepper."

"I was not flirting with Pepper," he said unconvincingly.

Anna huffed a small laugh, "I've said it once and I'll say it again, I'm your daughter and you raised me, which means when I lie, my tells are the same as yours. I'm also not blind, so there's no need to deny. I just hope that mild heart attack was worth it." She shot her father a coy smile and he rolled his eyes.

Changing the subject, he called her over to his work bench, "Well, since you're down here now, I want to run something by you."

Anna raised an eyebrow at Tony, "Go on…"

"I think it's time I filled you in on the details of my escape."

"JARVIS, are you up?" Tony asked sitting down at his desk, Anna only a couple of feet away in her own swivel chair.

"For you, sir, always," the A.I. responded.

"I'd like to open up a new project file, index as Mark 2."

The last time Anna had been in the workshop with her father, he had told her all about the circumstances in which he escaped his captors in Afghanistan. With the help of Yinsen and the miniaturized arc reactor, the two were able to create a suit of armor that protected him from the rain of gunfire and fight back against the Ten Rings. It even was able to take flight for a short while apparently.

Anna wasn't sure how much of it she believed right away but then as she thought about it, what reason did her dad have to lie?

The Mark 1 had not survived her father's crash landing in the desert before being found by Rhodey and the Air Force. But now, her father wanted to perfect the idea and create the Mark 2. Much like with the Mark 1, he was not going to turn down a helping hand, but instead he recruited his helper this time. Tony could not think of a brighter mind to help him in his endeavors of building a new and improved suit than his daughter. Obviously she was the best, she did have his genes.

First, they had started with the new blue prints. The design of the Mark 1 was bulky and unpractical, though it served its purpose at the time. The Mark 2 would be much more functional. Tony was stuck on the idea of flying so the father/daughter duo decided to begin at that.

The two worked on the boots first with the help of Dum-E, who Tony didn't think was very helpful at all. The teenager never understood why her father was so hard on the robot all of the time. Dum-E was one of his first big steps in to artificial intelligence technology. With a success like Dum-E, most would treat the robot like their own son, but Tony was never one to be so sentimental.

With one boot for each of them, they got to work. They created the joints so that the boot would continue to have full mobility, the mechanisms that would allow the front and back of the boot to unlatch so that Tony could get in and out of it, and lastly, the repulsors that would help enable her father to fly.

Once the boots were finished and ready for a test run, Anna helped her father hook them up to the arc reactor in his chest for power. They set up the workshop for the flight test, equipping Dum-E with a fire extinguisher and U with the camera. Anna leaned against U, watching the test live and also manning the camera to make sure it was getting everything that was going on.

"Okay, let's do this right. Start mark half a meter back to center," he sighed before looking back at the one robot. "Dum-E, look alive and stand by for fire safety. U, roll it." He paused, adjusting his stance. "Activate hand controls. We're gonna start out nice and easy with 10 percent thrust capacity to achieve lift. In three, two, one…"

Anna watched, seemingly uninterested though she was anything but. She waited patiently to see the fruits of their labor and for the boots to really help her father fly. Unfortunately, more work was to be done. Tony suddenly shot up from his position and smacked against the angled ceiling before dropping back to the ground haphazardly. Anna jumped in surprise and rushed forward just as Dum-E doused him with foam from the fire extinguisher.

"Oh my god! Dad, are you okay?" She said dropping to her knees at his side, checking him over for any injuries he may have gotten. Dazed but physically alright, Tony sat up, waving his worried daughter off.

"I'm fine. I'm fine. I think the thrust capacity was too high."

Anna scoffed out a laugh, "Ya think?" She got to her feet before leaning down to help pull her father up with her. "Why don't you go clean the foam off of you and then we'll fix it and try again."

Tony nodded, still a little stunned from the smack against the concrete ceiling, but shuffled away to take the boots off and clean himself up.

A few days later, or well nights, Anna came back down into the workshop to hand her father the coffee she had made the two of them. They had been working diligently on the Mark 2 suit with very little sleep and little progress had been made. The only thing they managed to discover in the meantime was how many times Tony could continue to slam into the ceiling and not seriously injure himself.

She stood behind Tony and he sat at the computer, looking over the blueprints, and saw more detailed blueprints for the gauntlets. "Flight stabilizers?" she guessed was his reasoning behind why they were moving onto the gauntlets before fully finishing and testing the boots.

"You got it."

The duo quickly got to work building the gauntlets and fitting them to Tony's arms. Anna was helping her father attach the right one to his arm for a test when Pepper came down the stairs.

"I've been buzzing you. You didn't hear the intercom?" she started. Anna honestly didn't know what she was talking about. The teen didn't hear the intercom at all. It must have been because she was in the zone. She may as well have been dead to the world when she worked. Apparently, her father was the same, as he didn't have a clue to what Pepper was referring to at all. "Obadiah's upstairs."

Anna rolled her eyes as her father responded, not really paying attention, "Great. I'll be right up."

"I thought you said you were done making weapons?" she asked curiously, wondering what exactly the father and daughter had been doing for the last week or so.

"It isn't; this is a flight stabilizer. It's completely harmless," Anna went to warn her father about the levels the flight stabilizer was set at but it was too late and he turned it on. A large beam shot out of the palm of the half-finished gauntlet, destroying a quarters of the workshop as it ripped through equipment.

Pepper covered her head and shrunk back away from the blast, as did Anna. Tony had flown back in the opposite direction due to the recoil. "I wasn't expecting that," was all he had to say as he laid in a heap on the floor.

Anna looked towards the now destroyed area of the workshop, noticing that her father had just barely managed to avoid hitting her work station. "You know, next time we test these repulsors, were aiming it at your side of the workshop," she said, shooting her father a dirty look as he got to his feet.

She went to follow Pepper up the stairs, when the older woman looked to her and quietly said, "It's times like those when I can really see the resemblance between you and Tony."

"When is that? When he's destroying the workshop?" Anna asked with a laugh.

Pepper returned it with a slight chuckle. "No, when you two are working together. You're both so focused and hardworking." She gave the brunette a genuine smile. "You are your father's daughter."

Anna stopped when they reached the top of the stairs, "Some may not always think that's a good thing." Her father had been dubbed many things, some not at flattering as others. He had been called a genius, a billionaire, a playboy, and a philanthropist along with much more. While Anna wouldn't mind being seen as a genius or philanthropist, and being a billionaire was just a fact, there was no doubting her father's womanizing and reckless ways.

"True," Pepper continued, the smile remaining in place, "You may be more mature than your father in some ways, though you still have your spouts of teenage rebellion and recklessness. But, you are brilliant and beautiful, stubborn and strong, loyal and compassionate. While I didn't know your mother, and you may have very well gotten those traits from her, I can see them in Tony too and that is why you are your father's daughter. That is why I'm glad you two are spending this time together, building… whatever it is your building. Your relationship had been strained for a long time before Tony was captured, and I'm glad you're rebuilding it and seeing your dad for who he really is and that he's seeing who you really are too."

Anna had not been expecting such sentiment from Pepper. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes, but like Pepper said, she was too stubborn to let them fall. Instead, she threw her arms around the woman tightly. They stayed like that for a few seconds before Anna heard her father start coming up the stairs.

The younger girl pulled away and started to head to the other staircase that led to the bedrooms. "I'm going to go finish getting ready for when Jake visits," she called over her shoulder to the redheaded woman. Right before she took the first step upstairs, she turned back around, "Andthanks Pepper."

Anna stood in the same spot she had just a week before, leaning against U as her father prepared himself for another flight test with the newly finished flight stabilizers.

"Day 11, test 37, configuration 2.0," Tony said for the camera, beginning the test. "For lack of a better option, Dum-E is still on fire safety." Anna rolled her eyes. Sometimes it was like he forgot that she was there and could do more than man the camera. But, whatever, Anna thought. If he wanted to trust Dum-E over her, then so be it.

Dum-E raised its arm to point towards Tony, who continued to scold the robot, "If you douse me again, and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to a city college." The robot hung its arm/head down, as if it was sad, causing Anna to crack a smile. Sometimes she wondered if her father had learned how to program emotions into them. "Alright, nice and easy. Seriously. I'm just gonna start out with one percent thrust capacity."

Anna watched as Tony lifted off of the ground a couple feet, slightly unsteady before touching back down. No smacking into the ceiling this time. Just as he touched back down onto the ground he looked back towards Dum-E who raised the extinguisher towards him. "Please don't follow me around with it either, because I feel like I'm gonna catch on fire, spontaneously. Just stand down. If something happens, then come out." He adjusted his stance before calling out, "Again. Let's bring it up to 2.5."

Tony rose a little higher off the ground this time, close to three feet. After a few seconds, he started to veer out of the test zone. As he tried to correct himself, he only made it worse, getting closer and closer to his cars. Anna pushed off of U and started towards her dad, trying to help him get back to the test floor without any car casualties, but didn't quite know what to do.

"Okay, this is where I don't want to be," Tony narrated as he drifted over the expensive Audis and hot rods.

"Do you want help?" Anna called out, thinking that if she could get him to grab onto something, that she could pull him back to where it was safe to touch down. Somewhere away from the luxury automobiles.

"No, no, I got this." Just as the words came out of his mouth, he drifted over the last car and over a desk causing the papers to go flying everywhere. The brunette teen held her arms out in front of her, blocking the swarm of loose paper from hitting her in the face. Tony put his flight stabilizers out in front of him to push him back, which worked well. He let out an uneasy laugh as Anna just stood there with her hands out cautiously, not sure how to help him if he fell. It wasn't like she could catch him without being crushed herself. "Could be worse. Could be worse. Could be worse. We're gonna be fine." Back at the test pad, he cut power and landed back on the ground.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tony could see Dum-E's arm raise with the fire extinguisher. "Nah, ah, ah, ah, ah," he yelled, holding his own arm out and telling Dum-E to stop before the robot drooped down again.

Anna smiled brightly, glad to see their hard work paying off. She ran up to her dad and grabbed his shoulders, "Congrats dad! You can fly!"

He smiled back at her, patting her on the back lightly since he still had the gauntlets on. "Yeah, I can fly." He stepped away and motioned for her to follow, "Come on, I'm taking this bad boy out for a real test flight."

Anna quirked an eyebrow at the older Stark, "Are you sure that's a good idea so soon? I mean this is the first successful test run we've had. To actually go out there…" she trailed off, hoping that her father would see the risk without her having to completely explain herself.

"It will be fine," he reassured her. "Besides, you'll stay here and monitor the suit from the workshop. With you and JARVIS helping me, it should work out perfectly."

Anna was still uneasy about the idea, but she knew how much her dad wanted to get out and really fly the suit they had been working on for weeks. Plus, she knew whether she gave the okay or not that Tony was going to go anyway, so she might as well be there to help him. Sometimes, it felt like she was the parent and he was the kid.

"Alright, let's do this."

Let me know what you think and review! I love hearing what you have to say. Feel free to ask any questions too, whether they're about the story or Anna (like what's her favorite color or Disney Princess... *cough*blue and Belle*cough*).

I know it was a little bit of a filler chapter but it showed you some relationships like Anna and Pepper, Jake and Anna as well as Tony and Anna. And even what Pepper really thinks of Tony with that parallel of her seeing the good in him through Anna, while he thinks all the good from Anna came from her mom, Sofia.

Again, so sorry it took so long to update, hope to do so again soon.