Chapter 29 – An Arc Reactor

A/n: I'm so glad you all liked The Iron Façade, seeing as it's a oneshot all review replies will be posted here seeing as all of you read this story too.

youwannabekate: Looking forward to hearing what you thought of it. I'm glad it met your expectations Kate, it means a lot to me when my regular readers like things I write. And that's why I cut it there I was just like… oh this chapter is shorter than I thought it would be. Protective!Avengers are the best.

XxxBellaBellaxxX: I'm glad you liked those parts. Still trying to get as many interactions between them as possible. Toni fights back differently (yet effectively) from the others :D

Ashtree1165: /Bows/ Thank you for the applause. And I'm glad you liked Iron Façade as well. Another reason the last chapter was so short was because I was writing that.

Booklover2526: Hiding behind masks is Toni's speciality and when one falters you find another. I'm really glad you liked IF. And that's the intention of showing Toni break down in a nutshell. She shouldn't have to deal with it and so she hasn't been. Until now when she acts as anyone else would.

paisley15: I'm trying to balance out the conversations and interactions equally so I needed some Bruce/Toni love to balance out the Clint/Toni. Sounds like a good way to be weird to me :D

ReadPaxJoy: I'm hoping crying is a good thing cause you know otherwise I'm doing something wrong clearly. Glad you enjoyed it.

Post U Later: I'm glad you're still thoroughly enjoying the chapters you're reading :D

SparkleNicole: I'm really glad you are enjoying this story :D Enjoy this chapter

Dragones: I know right; Toni's gone through so much. Have some more /lol/

ladynarutochan: Ahh! So you have ulterior motives. That is a good point because if I die you don't get anymore. That should ward off future threats of lynching :D

HKTM: I'm so glad that you really liked IF because it's kind of hard to write in that style so I'm glad I pulled it off. You're welcome

Harm Marie: I'm glad

skywright: Thank you for being understanding because that is precisely why I split it like that.

LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: I was wondering where you had gotten to. But you know what happens so not technically a cliffie only for those watching the film. Just the acknowledgment that they're going to die is just… /shivers/ Clint is awesome.

"Annie's about to trick them," Natasha said confidently, "probably by claiming she'll make the missile and making something to use against them instead." Like the others she wasn't entirely convinced that even the genius that was Toni Stark could make something as complex as the Iron Man suit or the Arc Reactor in a cave with limited materials

"You've clearly been spending too long around me if you can peg my reactions like that," Toni laughed glad to be distracted from the screen. Even after she had 'agreed' to build the missile they had still tortured her occasionally to make sure she was 'properly motivated.' She just hoped Amora hadn't shown any of that on the screen. She wasn't sure how everyone would react to seeing everything that had happened. She wasn't sure how she would handle it to be perfectly honest.

"If this is going to be my work station, I want it well lit," Toni ordered as the terrorists brought in all of the materials Toni was claiming to need, "I want these up," Yinsen was standing to one side translating for Toni as she still wasn't revealing her knowledge of Arabic.

"Always have something in reserve that you don't reveal to your captors," Clint said pleased that Toni knew one of the basic rules of being kidnapped. Always keep something in reserve no matter how trivial it may seem. Knowing Arabic would let Toni in on some of their plans and they would talk freely around her as they thought she didn't understand.

"I need welding gear," Toni continued, "I don't care if it's acetylene or propane. I need a soldering station. I need helmets. I'm gonna need goggles. I would like a smelting cup. I need two sets of precision tools."

"Okay," Bruce said quietly to Toni, "I'm beginning to think you did the impossible… again."

"Some things are impossible," Toni replied cryptically, "some are just assumed to be."

Toni's hands covered in a crude imitation of gloves were working on unscrewing one of the screws on a missile.

"They didn't give you gloves!" Bruce shouted appalled by the lack of safety given to Toni when she wasn't in the safety of her own labs where accidents just didn't happen due to JARVIS and her other AI's controlling everything. Plus she was in a situation where she was working with highly dangerous materials.

In response to this statement Toni simply held up her left hand that bore the marks of improperly treated chemical burns. More and more often the people in the room were becoming prone to speechlessness whenever Toni gave a response to a disturbing statement. It seemed as if nothing could go her way.

As she pulled the Allen key from the screw Toni asked Yinsen, "how many languages do you speak?"

"A lot," Yinsen stated simply, "But apparently, not enough for this place. They speak Arabic, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, Mongolian, Farsi, Russian." As he spoke Toni pulled out the contents of the missile shell.

"We know you speak Russian and Arabic," Steve said, "but how many of the others do you know?"

"Since coming back I've learned to speak all of them out of paranoia," Toni informed him, "But at the time I spoke Urdu and Mongolian out of that selection."

"From what I have seen of this part of Midgard not many people speak any of those languages in this part of your world," Thor said puzzled, "so why would you need to learn of them?"

"I think you underestimate that amount of business dealings I have to deal with all over the world Thor," Toni replied, "for a start in some parts of America many people speak either only Spanish or French so you have to get those bases covered and I clearly did. Then there are extremely influential tech savvy businessmen in both China and Japan so you have to be able to speak those languages too if you want communication to be efficient. Europe is a consumer industry so covering your bases there as much as possible is a good idea. You have French and Spanish down already and Britain speaks English if a slightly different version so there you go. Germany and Italy are also big consumer industries whose languages are spoken worldwide so those languages are your next best bet. Then cover Scandinavia, don't go for Finnish because it's completely different from the others but get Norwegian and Swedish down and you'll still be able to communicate in Finland for Swedish is the second language they learn there. Russia is a big place so Russian is always a good idea. You still haven't covered India which is a big place to leave blank so you need to pick up something from there but there are so many separate dialects in India that you need to pick up a few. So start with Hindi and Punjabi as they're two of the farthest reaching. Maybe add Sanskrit if you have the time which I did because I got bored of working on one of my projects. Then you've covered a lot of bases but hang on there are still some cultures that you miss out on with that list so Arabic is a great jump start to getting more people to understand you especially as it gets Africa which until now has been a blank. Portuguese is good for Africa too as it's one of the most common languages after English and French plus its uses in Portugal are obviously handy too. I went for Swahili and some Berber dialects to cover the majority of the rest. The Mongolian was just because I got bored and Urdu is good for Asia. Add Latin and Greek for important clauses in law for all the contracts I have to deal with and you have a pretty hefty list. I need all of these languages Thor because my job is to communicate to many different people of many nationalities."

"A-aren't you supposed to have consultants and translators who communicate with them for you?" Steve said taken aback.

"Yes," Toni replied, "but it's not mandatory and I don't trust most people. I know them all by name and could probably tell you a significant amount of their history but I don't know them. I certainly can't trust them! There's been double dealing in my company before and I will not let it happen again on my watch. Besides some of them have no idea how to communicate technological concepts in other languages as they barely understand them in English."

"Who are these people?" Toni asked fishing for information.

"They are your loyal customers, ma'am," Yinsen told her, "they call themselves the Ten Rings."

Toni placed the interior of the bomb down at the table curiously clutching at her stomach with one hand rather than her chest where the real damage was.

"O боже," Natasha realised, "you were still being tortured."

"How did you figure that out?" Bruce said bewildered.

"Toni's got a hand over her stomach and is specifically working with only her other one. It's highly inconvenient to work one handed if you have a clearly functioning second hand. And she admitted a while ago that she is in constant pain from the arc reactor! An improvised electromagnet and the fact that it was a recent trauma means that she would be in excruciating pain from it yet her hand isn't clutching at her chest but at her stomach. Therefore something happened to injure it between the last shot and this. They kept torturing her," Clint finished having come to the same conclusion as Natasha.

In another makeshift room within the cave some of the terrorists were watching the progress of the pair on computer screens via the security camera but as they weren't doing anything suspicious they thought nothing of their actions.

Back in the cave Toni was using a drill she had been brought to open up one of the larger missiles. "You know," Yinsen said crouching down next to her, "we might be more productive if you include me in the planning process." Toni acknowledged this view but still didn't let him in on the specifics.

"As horrible as it sounds that was the right decision," Bruce said hesitantly not knowing how Toni would take it.

"It makes sense," Steve acknowledged, "I know a thing or two about secrets and it's easier to keep them if you only tell someone when it becomes an absolute necessity to do so."

Toni was glad of Steve's approval of this part of her plan because in her current state she was sure another rant from Steve about her trust issues would either send her spiralling back to tears which she never wanted to happen again. Or it would cause her to blow up at him again and destroy the tentative friendship between the pair that was building through the viewing of these films.

A couple of well-aimed hits to the nose of the missile detached it from the rest and then she pulled out the interior of that one as well. Then she sat down at one of the tables in the room and began to take it apart talking as she worked, "okay, we don't need this," she said throwing anything she hadn't extracted over her shoulder callously and picking up a thin sliver of a silver material off of the table with some miniature tongs.

"What is that?" Yinsen inquired.

"That's palladium, 0.15 grams," Toni informed him.

"I cannot believe it," Natasha said incredulously, "you actually managed to do it in a cave in Afghanistan. That's not something that anyone should be able to make possible and yet somehow you managed it."

"Had it not sunk in that I'm a genius yet?" Toni joked glad to have finally managed to shock Natasha so much that it showed on her face. She wished she had a camera but she supposed she could always ask JARVIS for the recording later.

"We need at least 1.6," Toni informed her slipping into her business mode, "so why don't you go break down the other 11?"

As this was happening the men were still watching him on the screen, "what's she doing?" one of them asked.

"Working," replied the one who was closely monitoring the screens.

"They figured out that I wasn't making the Jericho a lot later than I thought they would actually," Toni said candidly, "it gave me an advantage that they were being such idiots. What I was building should have become obvious much more quickly!"

Toni worked intensively to form a suitable mould for the palladium the size of the hole in her chest as Yinsen removed the melted down element from the fire. "Careful," Toni told him walking forward with the car battery in her hands, "Careful, we only get one shot at this."

"You were worried that it wouldn't work out," Bruce speculated.

"Other people introduce variables I can't control but it was a necessary evil at the time," Toni confirmed.

"Relax," Yinsen said soothingly, "I have steady hands. Why do you think you're still alive?"

He poured the molten liquid onto Toni's mould as Toni inquired, "What do I call you?"

"Wait you still didn't know his name at this point," Steve said bewildered, "I just assumed you hadn't said it in any of the conversations that we were shown."

"We didn't really have time for idle chit chat," Toni pointed out, "we were rushing to save our lives and it was the first free moment that we got. He only knew my identity because I'm a public figure and we met once. I meet so many people at conferences and like I said earlier it was a bad weekend. I only asked then because just referring to him as a fellow captive in my head got extremely weird."

"My name is Yinsen," he told her.

"Yinsen," Toni repeated, "Nice to meet you."

Yinsen finished up with pouring the palladium and turned to Toni amused, "Nice to meet you, too."

"Keeping some semblance of normality is what keeps you alive," Toni told the group who were looking a little surprised at the turn the conversation had taken.

"I thought that was what you were doing I just didn't expect something that normal from you even when you weren't in captivity," Phil quipped causing Toni's lips to quirk upwards not wanting to admit that she found what would have been an insult to anybody else amusing.

Toni gently lifted the ring of palladium off of the mould and into the vessel she needed it in for her mechanism as Yinsen watched. She went on to fix together lengths of wire and bits of scrap metal they had from the disassembling of the missiles using a system of mirrors so that she could get a detailed look at what she was doing.

Bruce suddenly realised what Toni was doing upon seeing the shape of what she was constructing and was taken aback. He didn't say anything but he was more impressed than he'd ever been by any of Toni's inventions by the fact that she could build something as powerful as a miniaturised arc reactor in a cave with minimal tools. He knew she was smart, he knew she was a genius, he just hadn't known the true extent of her intellect until now and he wasn't sure how to process it. He had of course known that Toni left him in the dust when it came to most fields except perhaps his own specialised one in gamma radiation and even then she was pretty damn close. He only kept ahead there because of pure necessity. He had to know everything about the accident that caused the Hulk. It had created an obsessive need to find out more so he could prevent it happening to anyone else. Yet he had somehow missed just how far ahead Toni truly was because she hadn't just made a self-sustaining energy source. She had made the prototype under duress and in direct defiance of her captors.

The next shot was of Toni turning up a device and the rudimentary arc reactor sitting on the table lit up with a neon blue glow.

"You invented it in a CAVE!" Clint exclaimed. Now that he knew how the arc reactor worked it seemed to be an even more incredible creation that must have required expert precision to create. He didn't think anything that complicated could be made of scraps.

Steve seemed to be lost for words once more and the others were still coming to terms with the idea themselves as Toni began to explain, "'necessity is the mother of invention'", she quoted, "it was most likely Plato who came up with that or a Greek version anyway and he was right. If I hadn't been under significant duress when I built it then arc reactor technology would never have become publically available and the Tower would still be connected to the Grid. But I made it work because I needed it to stay alive. I flourish in difficult situations. Always have."

Yinsen exclaimed in awe upon seeing it, "That doesn't look like a Jericho missile."

"That's because it's a miniaturised arc reactor," Toni explained, "I've got a big one powering my factory at home. It should keep the shrapnel out of my heart."

Steve threw Toni's jacket a quick look imagining the arc reactor that was hidden beneath it. Far from the arrogant billionaire's whim that he had originally thought it was it actually kept his friend alive. Maybe he had been wrong about her reasons for creating Iron Man as well but he hoped not. He didn't think he could live with the guilt that would come with that realization because that would mean that Toni and the suit were actually a package deal rather than the separate entities that he had always treated them as. He remembered one occasion when he had mused out loud after a fight with Toni about her not following orders that they could just find somebody else to fly the Iron Man suit without any significant problems at all. If that turned out to be untrue then he had a lot more to make up for than he knew. Especially since Toni had just brushed it off as if she was used to insults being hurled at her even from those who claimed they were her friends.

"But what could it generate?" Yinsen asked.

"If my math is right, and it always is, three gigajoules per second," Toni told him.

"Wow," Bruce said not able to think of anything else to say in response to that.

"The one I have now is much more powerful," Toni said shocking Bruce even more, "I couldn't keep that piece of trash in my body long term."

Especially since it was killing you, Natasha thought but she didn't say it out loud. She had no doubts that Amora would bring it up eventually towards the end of these events.

"That could run your heart for 50 lifetimes," Yinsen calculated.

"Yeah," Toni admitted, "or something big for fifteen minutes."

Toni placed some sketches of different parts of some sort of a machine on one of the tables and switched the lamp above it on to give Yinsen a better view. There were four crumpled sheets in total and the top one didn't seem to show anything.

"This is our ticket out of here," Toni whispered.

"What is it?" Yinsen queried.

"Flatten them out and look," Toni stated before smoothing the pieces of paper together and with the help of the light the Iron Man armour came together on the pieces of paper.

"You built the suit and the reactor there," Natasha exclaimed unable to hold back the disbelief from her voice.

A/n: I'm sorry this is another short one but my computer keeps freezing up and I have to keep rebooting it so this is my attempt at getting you your chapter today. I'm sorry if any of you were looking forward to a longer one.