A/N: Just a little something this time.
Experiment
A crash shook Avengers Tower. Steve dropped his sketchpad and ran out of his suite, meeting Bruce and Pepper in the hall, all of them automatically running toward the elevator to Tony's lab.
"Jarvis, was that an explosion?" Pepper demanded, as they piled inside and started up.
"There was no explosion, Ms. Potts, but there was an … accident," Jarvis said with a perceptible, and therefore worrying, hesitation.
"Is anyone hurt?" she asked, at the same time Steve and Bruce simultaneously said, "Is Tony all right?"
"Sir is unharmed," Jarvis assured them. "I cannot say the same for the laboratory."
They saw what Jarvis meant when the elevator doors opened. The safety glass wall was scattered like snow across everything in the lab. A now unidentifiable machine cast sparks out of a ragged hole through its middle.
Tony lay on the floor amid the wreckage, curled up defensively. Dummy scooted over and sprayed him vigorously with a fire extinguisher.
"Not me! Put out the FIRE, Dummy!" the engineer protested.
Thor stood in the center of the room, Mjolnir in his hand. His shoulders slumped in guilt and he apologized wretchedly and profusely, while Dummy doused the spitting sparks.
Tony climbed to his feet, combing crumbs of glass out of his hair with his fingers. "Don't sweat it, Goldilocks. It was my idea, remember? You can't make scientific progress without breaking a few labs." The billionaire surveyed the damage and shrugged. "I've done worse myself."
"A week ago last Tuesday," Bruce commented, relaxing when he saw everyone was uninjured.
"And nineteen days before that," Pepper added. "Tony, what happened?"
She and Steve didn't relax as easily as Bruce did.
"Just a scientific experiment gone awry."
"That should be your motto," Steve told him.
"We could make T-shirts," Bruce added dryly.
"What did you do?" Steve asked in his Cap voice.
"I told him that Mjolnir flies straight to my hand when I call," Thor said. "He wished to test that statement."
"I wondered if he could make it curve if he concentrated. It would be handy on the battlefield," Tony pointed out.
Steve looked around the shattered room. He raised an eyebrow at Tony.
"So you tested the hypothesis," Bruce said.
"The answer was 'no,'" Tony admitted.
"A most emphatic 'no,'" Thor said glumly.
A/N: Anybody remember last year's Avenger's Christmas Songs? Who's up for more?
