And as an apology for not sticking to my own timetable, here's bonus interlude for you! Well, technically this one was already pre-planned (and written before I'd started Act 3), so it'll actually be the fourth interlude that'll be the bonus, but whatever. Based on people's comments I think this is a scene many of you are anticipating and it's one of those scenes I've had in mind since the very beginning. Enjoy!

Third Interlude

Head-throbbing drumbeats and screaming guitars blared through hidden speakers, the music so loud it nearly drowned out the high-pitched grinding squeal of the circular saw. Sparks flew out from from it as it shaved away an edge of gold-coloured metal being held down by large metal arms. Excess metal clattered to the ground and the giant arms lifted the sheet of metal they were holding, turned it, readjusted it, then set it back down and resumed cutting along some pre-programed, invisible line.

Tony Stark ignored the arms and their cutting in favour of concentrating on the small welding torch in his hands and the tiny metallic pieces he was holding in place with tongs. Finally, he leaned back and took his hands away from the joint he was working on, putting the tongs down before shutting off the welding torch. He flipped up the protective visor and leaned in to examine his work up close.

He put down the welding torch. "JARVIS, how's the cutting going?" he asked.

The music's volume lowered from eardrum piercing to merely loud.

"Is it approximately 73.4 % complete. Estimated time to completion: 12.86 minutes. Sir– "

"Good, and how are those calculations coming along?"

"The calculations you requested were completed one hour and seven minutes ago."

Tony threw his hands up in exasperation. "Then why didn't you tell me?!"

"I did, sir. Three times."

Tony blinked. "Oh. You're sure?"

"Positive, sir. Now, perhaps I could bring your attention to–"

"–Then what are you waiting for?" He slipped off the protective visor and tossed it haphazardly onto the workstation. "Bring it up on the screen, chop, chop! I want to see how this material stands up now that we've managed to get rid of that fuck-awful blue colour."

A holographic screen popped into existence on Tony's left, just far enough away that he had to turn his wheeled chair around to properly see the display. His face twisted in annoyance as he reached out to grab at the screen – presumably to pull it forward.

Movement in the corner of his eyes caught his attention. He frowned and glanced towards the centre of the lab. And froze. Blinked.

"JARVIS, I hate to state the obvious, but there's a person in my lab. Why is there a person in my lab?" He paused. "No, even better: I have the best security, well, anywhere, so how is there a person in my lab?"

Tony swivelled his chair around to face the unknown person. It was a woman; she had short, blonde hair and wearing a long white labcoat and combat boots. However instead of staring around in awe, or greedily taking in whatever prototypes or scraps of blueprints he happened to have lying around, she was crouched in front of DUM-E, waving her hand slowly in front of the bot and watching with obvious fascination as Tony's bot's head/arm followed the movement.

"DUM-E, you useless bot, you're supposed to evict strangers not beg for treats!" Tony yelled at the bot. "Seriously, it's the community college for you, first thing in the morning."

The woman looked up and grinned at Tony. "His optic sensors are really something!" she said. "They must be light-sensitive instead of just infra-red and motion-active."

Tony blinked at her. "Of course they're light-sensitive. Why wouldn't they be?" His eyes narrowed as she stood and he saw that she was wearing what looked like standard military-issue BDUs under the labcoat. "How did you get in here exactly?"

"Sir, I feel I should point out–"

"–Not now, JARVIS. Who are you?"

"Actually before I answer that question, I think maybe you should listen to your AI," said the woman with an impish grin.

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Oookay. JARVIS?"

"As I was trying to tell you, sir, my sensors are not picking up a detectable presence."

"What? Are they malfunctioning?"

"No, sir. I have run a full system diagnostic and everything seems to be working at maximum efficiency. Cameras have visual confirmation of the presence, however neither heat nor motion sensors are registering anything."

Tony blinked. "How is that–" he began, looking at the woman closely for any hidden devices. The blonde met his eyes and smirked just before she stepped forward and walked right through DUM-E. Tony felt his mouth go slack as he gaped. There had been no distortion, no blurring, nothing whatsoever to indicate she'd passed through solid matter.

And Tony certainly didn't have any projectors in that part of the floor.

He sat up, eyes scanning every inch of the woman for any signs that she was anything less than a physical presence. "Okay, you have my attention," he said.

She smiled. "Oh good," she said. "I'm Colonel Doctor Samantha Carter."

Tony froze, mind whirling at the name. The answer came to him shortly and he snapped his fingers at his moment of epiphany. "Daniel's friend: the one who works at Area 51!"

He leapt out of his chair and walked up to her, reaching out to run his fingers over the edges of the projection. Only when he was this close could he see a slight fuzziness around the edges, a sort of soft edge that took away from the solidness of the image. He pressed in, amazed at how little his fingers disrupted the image even from up close. The contrast of solid matter to projection made the projection all the more obvious, but it didn't break up around the disruption.

"Where are you projecting this hologram from?" he asked. This didn't look like his work; he'd never bothered with a full range of the colour spectrum for his holograms, hadn't felt the need for it.

He heard her clear her throat and looked up. She raised an eyebrow at him. Tony blinked and then looked down, noticing just where his hand was on the hologram. He quickly pulled his hand away and took a few steps back, shoving his hands into his pockets against further temptation.

"Er, right, sorry," he mumbled.

"We're projecting the image from orbit," Sam Carter finally answered him. "This is something a couple of our scientists have been working on for a while." She shrugged mischievously. "I sort of convinced them to let me hijack it for a little while. Figured it'd be a better way to get your attention than an e-mail."

"Wow, it's like you know me," he said.

She grinned. "Daniel said you were a bit like me."

Tony grinned back. "Oh he did, did he? Well consider my attention gotten, now you didn't just pop by to say 'hi', did you?"

"Daniel said he told you about the Ori."

The grin slid off Tony's face. "Yes, the big bad alien armada heading right for Earth. He said you were in charge of creating some sort of weapon to defend Earth with?"

"Not quite. It's not a weapon I'm building: what I'm trying to do is create a dimensional bubble large enough to encompass the entire planet in order to shift it out of phase and into its own pocket dimension. We'd be still be able to keep an eye on their movements, but they wouldn't be able to see or touch us."

Tony felt the excitement building up in his veins, felt his fingers twitch as he imagined the schematics for such a device.

"And you're having trouble getting it to work?" he asked.

"Oh no, the phase-shifting device works just fine on a smaller scale," she said, much too dismissively for Tony's taste (only he was allowed to be that dismissive when it came to making brilliant creations work). "According to all the scenarios I've run, the calibrations I've made to it should allow it to work on a larger scale, but the problem I'm running into is that–"

"–the power requirements for something like that would be massive," Tony finished as his mind rushed ahead. He snapped his finger and pointed at her. "The arc reactor. You want the arc reactor."

"I need 700 gigawatts of power. Short of re-routing all power from seventy percent of the country..." she sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "If I had more time I could probably build something. Maybe. But from what little I know about the arc reactor, I think it should work. I mean, we might need more than one–"

"–One should be fine, we'll just make it bigger," said Tony. He narrowed his eyes at her. "But you know I'm not going to just hand over arch reactor specs to anyone, even if it is to save the world."

"Give me your cell number and I'll text you the GPS co-ordinates."

Tony blinked. "GPS – wait, are you..." He broke out in a grin and rattled off the number. "How exactly did you get permission for this? From what we overheard when Daniel was here, the military doesn't exactly want me on-board with anything."

The colonel looked sheepish for a moment. "Well, I didn't specifically get permission to bring you into the project... but I did get blanket permission to request any and all resources I might need to get this done before the Ori get here."

"So I'm a resource now?" Tony asked, amused.

She shrugged. "Daniel would say that people are one of the best resources."

"Then who are we to argue with Daniel Jackson?"

"JARVIS, are you sure this is the right place?" Tony asked as he flew over the desert. "I mean, I know according to every single rumour ever Area 51's supposed to be in the middle of nowhere, but I'm pretty sure we passed 'middle of nowhere' ten miles ago."

"Sir, we are approaching the GPS co-ordinates. Sensors are picking up faint energy readings and radio activity."

"Show it to me, J."

A screen helpfully popped up on the HUD, displaying the readings. Tony hummed thoughtfully as he skimmed through the numbers. It wouldn't have been enough to catch anyone's attention if they weren't looking for it, but there was definitely something more in that area than just sand and cacti. He wondered what sort of shielding they were using, because the readings he was getting looked like they were for some sort of small bunker, not a large research facility.

He landed on the exact spot with as loud a thud as he could manage without actually crashing to the ground, crouching down and stabilizing himself with one arm. The HUD's motion sensors picked up minute movements at ground-level: cameras, probably. Well, whatever, he'd been invited, so let them get a good look. After a few moments, he raised his faceplate and took in the area with his naked eyes.

There wasn't much to see. Unless you really liked sand.

Needless to say, Tony wasn't particularly surprised when a large box started to rise up out of the desert in front of him. He was slightly impressed with how silently it managed to move despite the no-doubt powerful machinery at work, but that was hardly surprising. When it stopped moving it looked like a tall metal booth with a cap made of dirt and sand (Tony saw plexiglas keeping at least some of the dirt in place, but he couldn't help but wonder how the sand wasn't flying off with the motion). Doors on the front slid open and two armed military guards stepped out.

Tony tensed, but relaxed moments later when Colonel Doctor Sam Carter barrelled past them as though she barely noticed them.

"Doctor Stark," she greeted with a smile. "I'm glad you made it. Sorry for the delay; we had to confirm it really was you."

"That's perfectly understandable," he answered back, wordlessly giving the command to dismantle the suit. The blonde watched with interest as the Iron Man's parts flew away from his body and then reassembled beside him.

"How fast does it go?" she asked.

"I've clocked its maximum speed at about Mach 3.6, but it starts getting a bit shaky in the air after 3.3."

"Really?"

She looked covetously at the suit, her eyes shining with excitement. Tony smirked. Well, looked like the good little astrophysicist had a thing for speed. He had a feeling they were going to get along just fine.

"So, I think you said you had some science to show me?" he said. "And, call me Tony," he said, holding out his hand. "I only make people I don't like call me Doctor Stark."

She smiled as she shook it. "In that case, I'm Sam. And I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Tony laughed.