Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Monaco Grand Prix.
Happy was driving Laura, Tony and Pepper up the track as he pulled up to the Hotel de Paris.
Laura got out, wearing Mercedes gear, looking excited, as Tony got out and gave a peace sign to the cheering crowd in the stands.
Happy followed them inside while carrying his red suit case.
"You know, it's Europe. Whatever happens the next 20 minutes, just go with it." Tony told them.
"Go with it? Go with what?" Pepper asked confused.
"That literally means nothing." Laura rolled her eyes as Nat walked up to them.
"Mr. Stark?" she greeted.
"Hey." he smiled.
"Hello. How was your flight?" she asked.
"It was excellent. Boy, it's nice to see you." he said as a waiter brought out drinks for them.
"We have one photographer from the ACM, if you don't mind. Ok?" Nat took the drinks from them, but Laura took a glass and stepped out of shot, next to Nat, not wanting her picture taken.
"When did this happen?" Pepper asked annoyed as Laura took a sip of her drink.
"What? You made me do it." Tony argued.
"I made you do what?" she asked angrily.
"You quit. Smile. Look, right there. Stop acting constipated. Don't flare your nostrils." he joked through his teeth while smiling as the photographer took his photos.
"You are so predictable." she said through her clenched teeth.
"That's the amazing thing." he joked.
"Right this way." Nat led them into the restaurant and Laura tried getting out of there without being rude.
"You look fantastic." Tony complimented Nat.
"Why, thank you very much." she said plainly.
"But that's unprofessional. What's on the docket?" he asked.
"You have a 9:30 dinner." she explained.
"Perfect. I'll be there at 11:00." he replied.
"Absolutely." she nodded.
"Is this us?" Tony asked about the empty table.
"It can be." she offered.
"Great. Make it us." he asked.
"Ok." Nat got some waiters to clear it as they walked up to the bar.
"Mr. Musk. How are you?" Pepper asked as he got up from a table and Laura tried to hide her excitement.
"Hi, Pepper. Congratulations on the promotion." he complimented.
"Thank you very much." they shook hands.
"Mr. Musk I am a big fan of Tesla and your work." Laura beamed while shaking his hand.
"Why thank you very much. Congrats on your promotion as Senior Engineering director for Stark Industries." he gave her his card.
"In case you need a change of scenery." he offered, and she gave Tony a smug look.
"Elon, how's it going. Those Merlin engines are fantastic." Tony complimented, trying to distract him.
"Thank you. Yeah, I've got an idea for an electric jet." he said while giving Laura a knowing look and she smirked, liking people trying to poach her.
"You do?" he asked.
"Yeah." he nodded.
"Then we'll make it work." he offered.
"Uh, I'm going down to the pit lane. Some of us have a slight obsession with F1." Laura downed the rest of her drink and walked out as Pepper and Tony watched her leave.
"You want a massage?" Tony joked to Pepper.
"Oh, God. No. I don't want a massage." she said annoyed.
"I'll have Natalie make an…" he began but Pepper interrupted him.
"I don't want Natalie to do…" she replied but Tony interrupted her.
"Don't want you tense. By the way, I didn't mean to spring this on you." he apologized about the photo.
"Thank you very much." she thanked him.
"Green is not your best color." he joked as Hammer looked over at them from the other side of the bar.
"Anthony. Is that you?" he walked over to them.
"My least favorite person on Earth." Tony muttered to pepper.
"Hey, pal." Hammer shook his hand.
"Justin Hammer." he greeted plainly.
"How you doing? You're not the only rich guy here with a fancy car. And where is your protégé? I don't see her anywhere?" he looked around for Laura.
"She's not here." Tony dismissed him.
"That's too bad. I'd love to speak with her in person and do you know Christine Everhart from Vanity Fair. You guys know each other?" she walked up to them.
"Hi. Yes." she nodded.
"Yes, roughly." Tony hinted.
"We do." Pepper nodded.
"BTW, big story. The new CEO of Stark Industries." Hammer pointed at Pepper.
"I know, I know." Christine replied.
"Congratulations." he complimented.
"My editor will kill me if I don't grab a quote for our Powerful Women issue. And is Laura Watson here? I'd like a quote from her as well." she asked.
"Oh, uh…" Pepper looked back towards the door.
"Can I?" she held out her note pad.
"Sure." Pepper sighed.
"She's actually doing a big spread on me for I thought I'd throw her a bone, you know. Right?" Hammer tried one upping.
"Right. Well, she did quite a spread on Tony last year." Pepper ignored his jab.
"And she wrote a story as well." Tony joked.
"It was very impressive." she complimented.
"That was good." Tony added.
"It was very well done." she said.
"Thank you." she nodded.
"I'm gonna go wash." Pepper got up.
"Don't leave me."
Meanwhile, Laura was walking down the pit lane, taking pictures of the F1 cars with her phone and enjoying the sights and sounds of the pre-race festivities.
She saw a crowd gather by the start/finish line and walked over to it.
She tried looking over shoulders as people took pictures of something.
"What's going on?" she asked a man.
"Tony Stark is racing. He's getting in his car!" he said in a British accent excitedly.
"Are you shitting me?" Laura hissed.
The red lights turned on and the race began, forcing everyone back to their seats.
Laura was speed walking back to the hotel where Pepper was, knowing she didn't know about Tony's plans, and that she'd be just as angry about them.
Suddenly a man in an official uniform opened up the gate and walked on the track, shocking everyone.
F1 cars sped by him as she watched him open up his uniform on one of the large screens, revealing an arc reactor and she went wide eyed.
"Oh, not good, not good, not good!" she ran as fast as she could towards the Rolls.
The man strolled down the track casually as he revealed electric whips as they burned off the top half of the uniform.
A car raced towards him and he split it in half, sending it crashing against the fence.
Laura made it to the Rolls, opened up the trunk, and took out her suit case as Pepper and Happy ran towards her.
"What are you doing here?" Pepper asked confused.
"And what are you carrying?" Happy saw a familiar looking case.
"No time to explain." she dropped the case on the ground, next to her feet.
"Sorry about this." she apologized to Pepper as she placed her foot in it.
It assembled around her legs as she dropped her arms.
She held them out as the pieces attached themselves around her and her arc on her chest armed.
Her suit arms assembled as her stabilizers armed and her boots put themselves together, instantly.
Her matte black suit armed itself as her helmet came on around her head and she took off fast, stunning Pepper and Happy.
She flew low down the track, seeing the split cars and wreckage as she saw Tony's split car and the man walking nonchalantly towards him.
He turned around, hearing her flying towards him.
Meanwhile, Happy was driving Pepper, who was holding the case in the Rolls, dodging the oncoming cars.
He attempted to whip her, but she dodged it and gave him an upper cut to the chin, sending him backwards against the fence.
Happy honked the horn, getting their attention, as they got out of the way and he drove into the man, pinning him against the guardrail.
Tony stumbled out as Laura landed, looking up and down at the person in an advanced suit in shock.
She opened up her helmet, revealing herself.
"What the…" he managed to say.
"Hi..." she waved her hand awkwardly.
"Are you out of your minds!" Pepper screamed at them.
"Me? What about her? In a suit! Where did you get this?" he asked angrily.
"It's mine Tony. My own design. My own engineering. And I just saved your ass so you're welcome by the way. And what the hell were thinking driving an F1 car!" she yelled back as Tony looked over to Happy.
"Where you aiming for me or him?" he asked unamused.
"I was trying to scare him, but she came out of nowhere!" he exclaimed.
"Yeah, I did that." Laura crossed her arms.
"Get in the car right now!" Pepper yelled at them.
"How is this my fault!" Laura yelled back angrily.
"Get in the car!" Happy added.
"Worst vacation ever." Laura hissed as the man whipped her wrist, flipping her over the car, and she landed on her back.
"Shit!" she yelled as her helmet came back on.
"Give me the case!" Tony pleaded as Happy continued to drive into him.
The man whipped the both doors open in half as Pepper screamed.
"Calm down!" he tried taking it from her.
"Give me the case! Please! Come on!" she threw him the case.
The suit assembled around him as Laura kicked the car away.
She aimed her hands at the man as her stabilizers armed themselves, but he whipped her wrist again.
She fired a shot from her other stabilizer, but the man whipped the blast away.
Laura pulled on the whip, trying to free herself as Tony fired a blast at him.
The whip went around his wrist as he sent shocks of electricity through the whips towards them, glitching out there suits.
Tony grabbed onto the whip and made his way towards him as Laura followed suit.
Tony ripped the arc out of his suit as Laura punched him in the face, hard, knocking him to the ground.
Police rushed in and apprehended the man as Laura's HUD analyzed the arc and crushed it.
The man was being taken away as he spat out blood and shouted "You lose! You lose!"
Tony watched Laura's suit dissemble around her and into a case in disbelief as they stood in the middle of the chaos.
He tried coming up with words with a finger raised as she shifted uncomfortably while police cars and ambulances surrounded the scene.
Later, Tony was in a Monte Carlo jail with officials as they walked towards the man's cell.
"We ran his prints. We got nothing back, not even a name." the police officer explained in French.
"Where are we going?" Tony asked.
"Over there. We're not even sure he speaks English. He hasn't said a word since he got here." he explained.
"Five minutes." he asked as they let him inside.
The door shut behind him and he saw the man stripped, handcuffed, and sitting on the bench, facing away from him.
"Pretty decent tech. Cycles per second were a little low. You could have doubled up your rotations. You focused the repulsor energy through ionized plasma channels. It's effective. Not very efficient. But it's a passable knock-off. I don't get it. A little fine tuning you could have made a solid pay check. You could have sold it to North Korea, China, Iran, or gone onto the black market. You look like you got friends in low places." he said as he sat down on the opposite side of the bench.
"You come from a family of thieves and butchers. And now, like all guilty men, you try to rewrite your own history. And you forget all the lives the Stark family has destroyed." he accused.
"Speaking of thieves, where did you get this design?" Tony asked.
"My father. Anton Vanko." Vanko revealed.
"Well, I never heard of him." he dismissed.
"My father is the reason you're alive." Vanko argued.
"The reason I'm alive is cause you had a shot, you took it, you missed... among other reasons." he said still in shock about Laura's suit.
"Did I? If you can make God bleed, the people will cease to believe in him. And there will be blood in the water. And the sharks will come. The truth, all I have to do is sit here and watch as the world will consume you." he countered.
"Where will you be watching the world consume me from? That's right. A prison cell. I'll send you a bar of soap." Tony got up and knocked on the door.
"Hey, Tony. Before you go, palladium in the chest, painful way to die." Vanko smirked and Tony looked back at him one last time.
He walked out and Vanko chuckled sinisterly.
They were all flying back as Laura was sleeping with her headphones on.
Her and Tony had a heated argument about her suit.
And the day as a whole had taken its toll.
Plus it wasn't just him who was mad at her about it.
She knew this day would come eventually and change her life forever.
However, she wasn't planning on it coming this quickly nor receive the backlash it received.
She did nothing wrong she thought.
She argued that the world would be safer if people like her who had the capability and responsibility to have a suit to have one.
But her suit was hers and hers alone and no one would take it from her.
No one.
As she slept, Pepper watched a news report with Stern.
"It's just unbelievable that this Black Bird…? Being Ms. Watson, after her behavior on Capitol Hill. It proves that the genie is out of the bottle and this man has no idea what he's doing. He thinks of the Iron Man weapon as a toy. And now they're two of them. Owned by two dangerous and reckless people! I was at a hearing where Mr. Stark, and Ms. Watson, were adamant that these suits can't exist anywhere else, don't exist anywhere else, never will exist anywhere else, at least for five to ten years, and here we are in Monaco realizing, These suits exist now."
"Mute." Tony muted the TV from the aisle.
"He should be giving me a medal. That's the truth." he placed a covered tray on the table in front of Pepper.
"What is that?" she asked.
"This is your in-flight meal." he uncovered it, revealing a poorly made omelet.
"Did you just make that?" she asked confused.
"Yeah. Where do you think I've been for three hours?" he said while looking over at Laura.
"She reassured me she's fine." Pepper told him.
"What should I do?" he sighed while sitting down across from her.
"Tony, she won't let you take her suit from her. You know how stubborn she is." she smiled faintly.
"I can't let her keep it Pepper. It's too dangerous. Even if it's her design." he argued, and she gave him a confused look.
"Yeah, we had a talk about it. She worked on it all by herself. Did way more testing than I did. It's impressive really. Lighter, faster, and smaller since its her. It does explain her behavior though. The working out, the…" he rambled but Pepper put her hand up.
"Tony, what are you not telling me?" she asked while giving him an encouraging smile.
"I don't want to go home. At all. Let's cancel my birthday party and… We're in Europe. Let's go to Venice, Cipriani. Remember?" he suggested.
"Oh, yes." she smiled.
"It's a great place to be healthy." he added.
"I don't think this is the right time. We're in kind of a mess." Pepper argued.
"Yeah, but maybe that's why it's the best time. Cause then we can…" he began but she interrupted him.
"Well, I think as the CEO I need to show up." she argued.
"As CEO, you are entitled to a leave." he countered.
"A leave?" she asked incredulously.
"A company retreat." Tony clarified.
"A retreat? During a time like this?" she argued.
"Just a ride. Well, I'm just saying, to recharge our batteries and figure it all out." he sighed.
"Not everybody runs on batteries Tony."