Yes I have survived my first week back in school!

In case anyone is wondering, Taylor and Tyler were originally intended to be split personalities of the same person, Fight Club style, which is why they were both based off of different aspects of my own personality, but as I started to flesh their characters out more I realized I couldn't decide anything about physical appearance or whether the character would be a boy or a girl, so I made twins instead. There's your useless fact about this story for the day!

Taylor and Tyler were trying to take their mind off the unavoidable torture their father would be going through in Afghanistan by exploring the mansion. It was huge. That wasn't necessarily surprising, considering they had always known Tony liked everything to be bigger, but what was slightly surprising was how clean it was.

"You feel like this place should be... I dunno, messier?" Taylor asked her brother, who was also drinking in the pure opulence of the sleek mansion.

"I suppose so. I wonder why that is? Maybe was something to do with the environment we were raised in..."

Taylor sensed that Tyler was approaching a long and scientific speech about impressions or childhood trauma or something else using big words she would definitely not understand and pulled out her phone and earbuds, getting prepared to tune him out and listen to music.

What she was not prepared for was when it rung. So far as she knew, no one in the past had her number, and she nearly dropped the phone like a hot potato. Tyler snatched it out of her hand just in time and read the Caller ID.

"It's Dad," he said incredulously.

Taylor scrambled to look over his shoulder at the screen. "NO WAY! Like, our dad? Or is it past Dad?"

"I don't think past Dad has your number. Was that the first time you took your phone out since getting here? Or, um... nevermind," Tyler trailed off, attempting to correct his tenses before giving up.

"I think so."

"So you had your phone this entire time and it never occurred to you to call someone?"

"Hey, I didn't think time-travelling phone calls were a thing! Can you blame me?"

They both stared at the phone, which was still ringing. Then Taylor grabbed it and swiped across the screen to pick it up, putting it on speaker.

"Hi Daddy?"

"Taylor? Is that you? Where are you? Is your brother there?"

"Me and Tyler are in your old house in Malibu, Dad," Taylor answered, trying her best to avoid lying.

"My old house? It blew up! Are you kids trying to prank me again? If so, it's not funny, the team is worried sick and-"

Taylor cut her father off. "I think I'm going to hand you over to Tyler now."

Tyler took the phone. "No prank, Dad. We think we're in your old house before it blew up."

Tony took a moment to digest that. "Very funny, Tyler. I expected a bit more from you then your sister," he said, ignoring Taylor's indignant huff. "Where are you really?"

"Seriously, Dad, we met past you and everything! Before you even became Iron Man! I'm not even sure how it happened, Taylor just found this machine in the lab and wanted to know if I could fix it and I did but then we were here and we were really scared and I was at SHIELD and Taylor came to rescue me even though she had to kill some SHIELD guys to do it and Dad we're really scared please believe us!" Tyler shouted, getting dangerously close to panic mode.

Taylor muttered, "Deep breaths, Tyler. I'll take the phone for a moment. You go lay down." She extracted the phone from her brother's trembling hand and held it to her ear just in time to hear the end of her dad's next question.

"...look like?"

"Come again?"

"The invention. You said you found an invention in the lab. What did it look like?"

Taylor wracked her memory. "Sort of just a gray box, I guess. It was dusty, like it hadn't been used in a long time. I figured that was just because you hadn't touched it in a while, since it didn't work."

"Was there a red light on the top?"

"I think so?"

(The following vulgar rant has been deleted by the author for the sake of keeping this story rated T. When we pick up again, Taylor has learned some new curse words and Tony is slightly out of breath.)

"I forgot all about that thing!"

"I guess it would be dumb at this point to ask what it does?"

"It was a time machine I tried to build a while ago. Since time travel requires so much energy, it had to charge for about a year. When it was fully charged, the red light was supposed to turn on. It should have traveled back with you two, though, so you could get back."

"We haven't seen it. Well, I know I didn't see it when I woke up at your house, and I don't think Tyler saw it when he was at SHIELD, although he was a little preoccupied."

"Wait, you appeared at different places?"

"Yeah. Why, is that important?"

"It could be crucial. The time machine is supposed to only send one person back in time. I suppose both of you were sent because your genetic code is so similar. But it got confused as to where you should be sent, because you traveled from Avengers Tower, which doesn't exist yet in that time. So you were sent to the precursor to Avengers Tower, my mansion, and Tyler ended up where both of you were created, SHIELD."

Taylor only understood about half of that, but she was pretty sure none of it had involved the current location of the time machine. "So, where's the time machine?"

"It could be anywhere. After being forced to divert from its programming by sending two people back, it would have to make things up as it went along, something machines aren't too good at."

"So when you say it made thing up as it went along..."

"I mean it probably just chose a location at random. It could be at the bottom of the sea, on top of the Empire State Building, or in space."

"Well... how do we find it?"

"Tell Tyler to rig up a system signature search computer, signature 7at6o00plo6- are you writing this down?"

"Just a second," Taylor said, frisking her brother to find a pen and paper. He always managed to have some on him, in case he got a random idea for some sort of invention. She held the phone up again. "Okay, shoot."

"As I was saying, signature 7at6o00plo6f564n-" Tony continued, but he was interrupted by the low-battery warning beep from Taylor's phone before it quickly died.

So, a bit more information to exactly how the twins got sent back in time, as well as the question of will they ever find the time machine and get back?"

Also, I'm like Tyler. I always carry a notebook around in case I get an idea.