As time passed, Toni and Yinsen began their construction of a suit of armor. However, the captor became suspicious of the pair and burst into the cell unannounced with two guards.
"Relax." The head captor said. He walked over to Toni and tapped on her arc reactor.
"You touch anything else." Toni snarled.
The captor only smirked back at her.
"The bow and arrow, was once the pinnacle of weapons technology." He said, "You see, it allowed the great Genghis Khan to rule from the Pacific to the Ukraine. An empire twice the size of Alexander the Great and four times the size of the Roman Empire."
"Thanks for the history lecture, but we really have to get on that Jericho thing you wanted, so..." Toni gestured to a pile of metal in the corner.
"You see, in this day and age, the world is ruled by Stark weapons. Answer me this Miss Stark."
Toni winced.
"How can one woman," he spat the word out as if it were poison, "be the result? How can it be that whoever holds your latest weapons rules these lands?"
"I don't know." Toni shrugged. "I make good weapons?"
"You do. You make very good weapons, considering your unfortunate gender."
Toni's eyes narrowed.
"Such good weapons that in fact, soon it will be my turn to rule these lands." The captor paused and took a deep breath before speaking to Toni in Urdu.
Yinsen spoke up and he and the captor exchanged words in Urdu. Yinsen's words became angrier and soon the exchange became heated. So heated that one of the guards quickly forced Yinsen to the ground before the captor picked up a red hot iron poker.
Yinsen's words remained heated and angry, despite the threat directed towards him.
"What's going on here?" Toni asked, looking confused. "What does he want?"
The captor and Yinsen carried on in Urdu and the head captor forced Yinsen's head to a nearby anvil.
Toni stepped forward "What do you want? A delivery date?" She asked.
The second guard stopped her from going further.
"I need him." She gestured to Yinsen. "He's a good assistant.
"You have until tomorrow, to assemble my missile." The head captor said dropping the hot iron poker and signalling the guards to follow him out of the cave room.
Toni rushed to Yinsen and helped pick him up. "What was that about?"
"You honestly don't want to know." Yinsen said in disgust. "But we have to get you out of here before they come back."
"That bad, huh?" Toni asked.
Yinsen sighed. "Whatever you're thinking, it's definitely worse. A hundred times worse."
That night, Toni and Yinsen worked to finish the armor. The last thing was the helmet, so that morning, Toni finished it and it was attached to the armour. After a catnap, Toni dressed up in a fireproof suit and then Yinsen helped her into the armor itself.
"Are you okay?" He asked. "Any trouble moving?"
Toni lifted her arm. "Nope. I think I'm all good." She said.
"Okay. Now repeat the directions out of here." Yinsen said.
Toni sighed. "Forty-one steps straight." She recited. "Then sixteen steps from the door, right at the fork, thirty-three steps straight, a right turn and out."
Yinsen nodded. "Perfect."
"Yinsen!" The captors and guards shouted. "Yinsen! Stark!"
One of them began shouting in a foreign language.
"You know a million languages. Say something back to him." Toni urged.
"He's speaking Hungarian." Yinsen said.
"You said you speak a bit of Hungarian. Speak a bit of Hungarian?" Toni suggested.
Yinsen tried to speak in Hungarian, but he was right when he said he wasn't fluent.
The guards tried to open the door, which Toni had rigged with explosives. As they opened the door, it blew up, killing them.
Toni chuckled lightly. "How'd that work?"
"Oh, my goodness." Yinsen chuckled back. "I think it worked alright."
"Well, explosives are my specialty." Toni said.
"Yes they are." Yinsen nodded. "Now let me finish this. The other guards will have heard the explosion. Probably on their way now."
Toni shook her head. "You're right, they're coming. Initialise the power sequence."
Yinsen walked over to the adjacent computer. "If you're sure."
"I am." Toni said. "Do it."
Yinsen leaned over the keyboard. "Okay. Tell me."
"Function eleven." Toni explained. "You should be seeing a little progress bar on the screen." She said. "Do you have it?"
"I have it." Yinsen called out.
"Press Ctrl-I and Enter" Toni directed. "Now leave it and come fasten me up."
Yinsen walked back over to Toni. "Should I-"
"No. Just every other hex bolt." Toni said to the sounds of more of the guards approaching. "They're coming so nothing pretty, just get it done."
"Oh they're coming." Yinsen muttered to himself as he did what Toni asked.
"Now make sure the checkpoints are clear before you follow me out, okay?" Toni said.
Yinsen looked over at the computer and saw the progress bar at only fifty-five percent. "We need more time." He muttered and looked over to Toni.
"Don't do anything. Just wait-"
"This is your one chance, Toni." Yinsen said. "You have to get out of here. If I'm going down, then I'm taking some of them with me."
"Yinsen, what are you doing-think about your son!" Toni hissed.
Yinsen picked up a gun from a dead guard and ran away from the cave, shooting the gun in all directions.
"Yinsen!" Toni shouted, hearing the gunfire.
After another minute or so of anxious waiting, the progress bar finally hit one hundred percent and the lights went out in the cave. Some guards approached the dark cell, but were killed by Toni, wearing the fully operational armor. The guards shot at the armor, but it was bullet proof and deflected the bullets away.
The final guard fired his gun at her, but it made no difference as Toni's armour was bulletproof. One of the bullets deflected and hit him, injuring him enough to make him drop his gun.
Still wearing the armor, Toni walked through the halls as other guards were shooting at her. One of them ran up to her, but she hit him into the wall. Another one approached her and she hit him away too.
All the other guards stopped shooting and ran away in fear, locking themselves in a room. One guard, however, was left locked out and pounded on the door desperately to be let in.
Toni pushed him back like he was a box or something and punched through the metal doors.
The guards carried on running away. Except for the one from behind who shot at her. Unluckily for him, the bullet deflected off her armor and into his head, killing him instantly.
After a small length of time walking, Toni came across Yinsen slumped against the wall. "Yinsen!" She called out in concern.
"Toni! Behind you!" Yinsen shouted.
Toni looked behind. The head captor, was holding a rocket launcher. He fired the rocket at Toni, but missed, with the rocket going through the wall.
In retaliation, Toni fired a rocket back, from her armor, and it also missed. However it went into the ceiling and collapsed some of it, causing it to fall on the captor, knocking him out.
"Toni." Yinsen said.
Toni dropped to her knees, lifted her mask and saw that Yinsen was covered in blood.
"Come on." Toni said. "We've got to go. We're gonna stick to the plan-rest of the plan."
"I'm sorry, Toni." Yinsen whispered.
"Come on, Yinsen. Your son-you have to see your son." Toni sniffled. She felt tears prickling at her eyes. "Please get up."
"I can't." Yinsen said quietly. "I know this wasn't the plan."
Toni blinked the tears away aggressively. "It wasn't." She opened her mouth to say something else, but closed it. She had a reputation as an emotionless hardass.
"It's okay, Toni." Yinsen put his hand on Toni's armor. "If you ever meet my son, tell him that I'm, bàba, is proud of him."
Toni nodded and swallowed hard. "I promise. Thank you for saving me." She dropped her guard and let the tears fall.
"Don't waste your life, Toni." Yinsen said.
Toni nodded, unable to say anything else, knelt by Yinsen as he died, not wanting him to have died alone. When his chest stopped rising, Toni stood up, put her mask back on and angrily stormed outside where the Ten Rings guards were waiting. They shot at her with an assortment of guns, but once they realised the armor was bulletproof, soon stopped.
"I guess it's my turn" She snarled. She didn't care about her voice betraying her that she'd been crying. She simply activated the flame throwers on her armor and jets of fire destroyed the stockpiles of Stark Industries weapons.
The guards ran away from the fire-although some of them ran into the fire for the weapons and got burned or died. Guards from higher vantage points shot at Toni as she walked away. Toni was still spraying fire at everything in her wake.
As the weapons began exploded around her, Toni flicked a switch on the arm of the armor and activated the rockets on the boots. She took off flying flying from the exploding compound. Everything went relatively well, until she almost immediately ran out of power and crashed into a sand dune, causing the armor to break apart from the impact.
Toni looked around and smashed what was left of the armor off herself and pulled her mask off.
"Not bad." She groaned. "There's potential here."
Later in the day, a bloody, bruised and sunburned Toni figured she had to move from her wreckage if she wanted to be found and stumbled across the desert with her clothes ripped up. She'd taken off her fireproof suit and she was just wearing a tank top and leggings and her hair was tied up in a messy bun. As she staggered over a sand dune, two USAF helicopters flew over her.
"Oh my god!" She exclaimed and began waving. "Hey!" She shouted again and fell to her knees as the helicopters landed. The airmen then ran to her.
Rhodey was among them and ran the fastest towards her friend. "Toni! Oh my god, you're alive!" She said.
Toni burst out into laughter.
"This isn't a laughing matter" Rhodey bent down and put her hand on her injured friend's shoulder.
"I'm just so glad to see you-I thought I'd never see you again."
"Are you... crying?" Rhodey asked, noticing the tears in Toni's eyes.
"Nah." Toni wiped her eyes. "Just sand in my eyes." She said. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we're in the middle of a desert."
"I'm glad to see you too, Toni." Rhodey said.
Toni put her arms around her friend, who hugged her back.
"Come on, let's go get you cleaned up." Rhodey said. "Because you really stink right now."
Toni chuckled through her happy tears.