Chapter 35 – Trouble With The Arc Reactor

A/N - Looking forward to hearing from LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books so I can start work on another one-shot. Hopefully, I'll get the first one up today. Hopefully! Might still be tomorrow.

youwannabekate: Yes, he does. He's excellent comic relief when I need some although I will try and distribute it evenly so poor Steve isn't the butt of all of the jokes. And I'm glad you agree with where I'm placing the talk about Howard.

nessa11997: You're welcome :)

LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: Yes you are :) It should be able to link into this verse in at least one way but it can be an AU version. But the basics Tony being a girl and them having watched the movies if you set it after that must still be canon. Yeah, a lot of the arc reactor scenes get a little pervy when Tony becomes a girl.

Tanin: I'm not just making you wait; you should be glad I update every day :D I'm not the biggest Rhodey fan which probably comes through in my writing. Enjoy!

Post U Later: Yes, he is. It's very fortunate that he's dead or he'd be dead again a million times over.

Read Pax Joy: You're welcome! And yeah me too I would be so scared of breaking anything at all! But Toni/y would probably just immediately buy a new one anyway :D Yeah Obie is such a hateable character.

ReenReen: There will be no pairings in this particular story. There will be two parallel sequels that cover the same timeline but with slightly different pairings they being one Bruce/Toni and one Clint/Toni and I'm glad you'll keep on reading anyway. It still wouldn't really work because the Avengers are living with Toni in the tower which is her new mostly fulltime residence. But thanks for the suggestion.

Booklover2526: Yeah, hating Obie seems to be the general mood right now :D

paisley15: It merits capital letters :) And I'm glad I didn't have to change anything because I'm trying to stay as true to character as I can whilst still incorporating changes. I'm also setting up a major plot point for the sequel so let's see who spots it first :D Yeah, Obie is a total perv and it will sound so much worse with a girl

"Stark Industries," a presenter boomed on a show proclaiming itself as Mad Money.

"God, I hate that show," Clint sighed knowing that Toni and her company were about to get slammed, "they talk a lot of trash in a ridiculously over the top way and people believe it and buy and sell stocks based on it. Even I can tell that they get almost everything wrong."

"Well," Toni admitted, "their predictions were well founded I guess because I didn't exactly announce a new direction for the company when I shut down the weapons division so they didn't know what I was going to do with my company. I have a feeling the people who stayed on the stocks whilst they were crashing did it because they knew I was a genius who was bound to come up with something revolutionary that wasn't to do with the military."

"I've got one recommendation!" the presenter continued, "Ready? Ready?" here he hit a button causing a voiceover to ring out saying, "Sell, sell, sell!" and he continued by shouting, "Abandon ship!"

"And here we go," Natasha sighed also knowing of the show and finding it one of the most annoying things on the planet. He always picked a random company to pick on every month for some fabricated reason. Stark Industries had never been a target because it was a stable company run by a genius billionaire but the show was always biased against female run companies so the minute Toni shut down part of what Stark Industries did he latched onto the chance to ruin her. Just because it was something he enjoyed doing. He had nearly wrecked one of her covers once by destroying the stocks of the company that she supposedly worked for but luckily by that point she had all the Intel that she needed on the job and was able to carry out her mission successfully. It had been a close call and Natasha had sworn to herself then that if she ever came across the man in person she would proceed to beat him up. He wouldn't even be able to file charges against her because Natasha Romanoff had been a ghost since the day she had entered the Red Room.

"Does the Hindenburg ring any bells?" he said imperiously trying to further discourage any shareholders.

Steve's expression darkened the moment he heard this and he sent a withering glare at the man on the screen and the others were sure that had the man actually been there he would have been cowering in a corner to get away from it. "That's one of the few references I understand," Steve spat out, "and he just used it for that. He did not just compare something that resulted in the deaths of 36 people to someone choosing to do something that would save people's lives."

Bruce was a little too cautious of angering a furious Steve any further to point out that it had just been a metaphor if a highly exaggerated one. He did still have some self-preservation.

Piper sighed from where he sat watching it as the presenter ran around triggering more sound effects. "Let me show you the new Stark Industries business plan!" Here he picked up a baseball bat and used it to smash a Mad Money mug that sat on the table top.

"Anyone with half a brain should have been able to tell that it wasn't that bad," Natasha scoffed.

"Those who stayed on were highly rewarded seeing as their stocks in the company have shot up for keeping the faith in Stark Industries through our adaptation period," Toni informed the group, "most of the people who gave up their stocks because of reports like this are seriously regretting that right now because of the technological innovations that have come out of my R&D department."

"And as usual," Phil added, "you are holding about two years in reserve so you will release the things you've already come up with over time as the technology develops to make it possible to mass produce whilst you set to work on even more complicated products."

"We're currently beating Apple in sales of music players, tablets and accessories with the stuff that I invented a couple of years ago," Toni said with a shrug, "I don't see any need to spend my time working out the details of mass producing them when my R&D department will work it out eventually and I can create something that's even better than what they're attempting to mass produce. That gives me more time to work on arc reactors and Iron Man suits as well as all the stuff I make for you guys. And speaking of work for you guys," she said tapping a few buttons on her StarkPad, "the Widows Bite I developed with a wider range has been completely synthesised and should be ready for testing in my new training area (which I also just finished programming the holograms for) when we next take a break."

"You were working all this time," Steve said incredulously, "but you weren't even looking at your StarkPad."

"So…" Toni said, "I've memorised where all the keys are and all the functions I installed on it. All I have to do is look down at it every so often to work out any glitches and that barely takes me two seconds. Not my fault that you are all so absorbed in watching this representation of my life that you didn't spot me doing it."

Piper winced a little as the presenter continued, "Look, that's a weapons company that doesn't make weapons," he was pointing at the shattered ruins on the floor, "that's what you get when you put a woman in charge of a company worth millions of dollars people."

"He did not just say that," Natasha said with a snarl, "I knew he was a chauvinist but saying it openly on television instead of just targeting companies run by woman is a new low even for him."

"Piper," Toni's voice said coming through his StarkPad, "how big are your hands?"

Piper clearly hadn't heard Toni properly as he muted Mad Money and asked, "What?"

"How big are your hands?" Toni reiterated.

"This is going to be awkward," Bruce stated realising that it was going to be something to do with the arc reactor. And considering where it was located; yeah this was going to be awkward. Natasha echoed his statement clearly having come to the same conclusion about what Toni needed Piper to do for her.

"I don't understand why…" Piper said confused but Toni interrupted her with a quickly uttered, "Get down here, I need you."

Piper whilst clearly still confused put aside his laptop and began to walk down to the lab. He was clearly still confused as he entered the code to open the lab doors to reveal Toni lying down on a recliner wearing a tight fitting black tank top with a hole cut in the front for the arc reactor to fit through which through some miracle didn't show anything inappropriate. In her hand was another miniaturised arc reactor.

"Yeah, it took me about three shirts before I figured out exactly where I needed to put it because obviously I wasn't cutting holes in my t-shirts whilst they were still on my bod. I'm not an idiot," Toni said upon being given questioning looks about why on earth she had made a hole in her shirt.

"Hey," she said as Piper advanced cautiously into the room as if unsure whether Toni really wanted her to get any closer to her, "let's see them. Show me your hands."

"Oh," Clint said coming to a sudden realisation, "I know what you're doing now. That is really awkward."

"Let's see them," Toni said again as Piper drew in closer and puzzled showed Toni his hands and his boss sighed in relief, "They are small enough for what I need you to do."

"You struck lucky there," Natasha told Toni who simply nodded in response. It would eventually have culminated in a very bad situation if Piper had been unable to help her because at the time she really hadn't had anyone else that she could trust. Rhodey was still a maybe at that stage and his hands were bigger than Piper's anyway and Obie was a maybe tending to a no and had always been that way just because he was so closely involved with her father and his attempt to steal her work.

"I just," Toni said haltingly, "need your help for a sec."

"Oh, my god," Piper exclaimed looking at the blue light shining in Toni's torso, "is that the thing that's keeping you alive?"

"It was," Toni said looking down at the new arc reactor, "it is now an antique," Piper stepped back confused, "this is what will be keeping me alive for the foreseeable future."

"Toni you have a very odd definition of antique because I'm pretty sure that arc reactor isn't even a quarter of a year old in that scene," Phil said incredulously.

"Well, it was an antique in comparison," Toni defended, "it was also made up of parts in a cave and once I was in my lab the next version was always going to be better than the one I made in a crisis situation. I had time to refine it."

"I'm swapping it out for an upgraded unit," Toni continued, "and I just ran into a little speed bump."

"That does not sound good Lady Toni," Thor said concerned even though the events of this film had already happened. But just like Steve earlier Thor had become drawn into the film and couldn't stop himself from reacting to it like he was viewing live events. Maybe it was because the two of them had the least experience with television not having had access to it until they joined the Avengers and moved into Avengers Tower.

"Speed bump," Piper said concerned, "what does that mean?"

"It's nothing," Toni said quickly, "It's just a little snag. There's an exposed wire under this device." Here she reached up and turned the arc reactor pulling it out of her chest.

"How long would it take…?" Steve began uncertainly.

"For it to kill me?" Toni finished, "it would depend on how long ago it was that it was last removed for any length of time. I can survive with a piece of it buried in my aorta as long as it's there long enough to gain scar tissue but if I keep it out for over 20 minutes or take it out too frequently over a certain period of time then yes, I will die fairly quickly."

"You say you could survive with a piece of it in your aorta with such confidence," Natasha said cautiously, "you know because there's already a piece there. Don't you?"

The others were praying for a negative answer knowing then that something had happened to Toni that had brought her close to the brink of death. But they didn't get their wish because Toni's answer was a clipped, "yes! Complications arose."

The team didn't bother asking her to elaborate because she was never going to in a million years. She was fully determined to keep things private until Amora saw fit to show them to the team.

"And it's contacting the socket wall and causing a little bit of a short," Toni explained, "It's fine!" It probably didn't help Piper's nerves that she accompanied this by snapping the wire of the arc reactor away and handing it over to Piper.

"Not the best way to go about asking for his help perhaps Toni," Phil sighed knowing that the Piper back then would have had real trouble seeing Toni pull something that was keeping her alive out of her chest. Nowadays he wouldn't even be in the room with her when she was doing it even if it was necessary. Of course Phil didn't have any proof of this but from what he'd heard about what Piper had become and from his own changing experiences with the man he could make an educated guess.

"What do you want me to do?" Piper stuttered as he took it.

"Put that on the table over there," Toni told him nonchalantly, "that is irrelevant."

"Oh my god!" Piper exclaimed.

Steve could barely look at the screen even though he was sure this scene could become important later on in understanding things about Toni. It just looked offensive and wrong to him and whilst he knew Piper was only going to help Toni it didn't sit right with his values system. It actually triggered some serious thinking about what he would do if he had to help out with Toni's arc reactor in some way because what if being awkward around the device led to her death. He didn't think he could deal with the guilt if that happened plus the fact that losing Toni after he had just begun to get to know her through these films didn't even bear dwelling on.

"I just want you to reach in," Toni said uncomfortably, "and you're just gonna gently lift the wire out. I know it's awkward and I'm sorry."

"At least you acknowledged it," Steve said still torn between whether to look at the screen or not. Eventually he decided that if Toni could suffer through some of the scenes earlier in the movie then he should be able to deal with this and not let his 40s values get in the way. He just had to keep reminding himself that it was Toni who must be going through the most so far as she had been in all of the films. And a lot of the things that had happened to her in them were severely traumatising so much so that Steve was astonished that her masks were so good that she showed no outward sign of any of it. Maybe that was a bad thing though. It was something to talk to the others about anyway.

Piper peered nervously into the housing for the reactor asking worriedly, "Is it safe?"

"Yeah, it should be fine," Toni said calmly, "It's like 'Operation'. You just don't let it touch the socket wall or it goes 'beep.'"

"A comparison to a board game," Bruce said shocked, "from you!"

"What do you mean 'Operation'?" Piper said confused.

"Yeah," Toni said taking in the shocked looks of the team, "personally I find it much more shocking that it was me that had heard of the board game and Piper that hadn't. How did he ever miss out on knowing about 'Operation'?"

"It's just a game, never mind," Toni sighed, "just gently lift the wire. Okay? Great."

"Okay," Piper said going to put his hand into the chamber but then flinching back as though he had been burned, "you know. I don't think that I'm qualified to do this."

"Nobody was qualified to do it," Toni said amused, "there are no other cases of people doing that and certainly none of people making arc reactors in caves to save their own lives. Besides it wasn't like there was any time to find anyone else because I'd just disconnected my old arc reactor."

"And you were already beginning to die again," Natasha said solemnly, "the wire was stuck so you couldn't put the old one back in temporarily and you couldn't put the new one in until all the wires of the old one were gone."

"No, you're fine," Toni said reassuringly but also as quickly as she could, "you're the most capable, qualified, trustworthy person I've ever met. You're gonna do great."

Toni silently wished that she could still use all of those qualities to describe her friend but they technically weren't true anymore. The most qualified person for situations like that was actually Bruce and she couldn't trust Piper after he'd attempted to pull one over on her by altering Natasha's report. He knew full well that she would be devastated if she had thought Natasha had betrayed her a second time by writing down lies and he also knew that she would never have been able to work with her friend again. This was of course his aim but it didn't make it right. The only thing that kept their relationship from being as short as the rest of Toni's was the fact that she knew from the beginning that he had done it.

"Is it too much of a problem to ask?" Toni said reverting to her usual snarky tone, "Cause I'm…"

"Dying," Clint finished bitterly not liking the way Piper was stalling something that could result in Toni's death if left too long.

"Okay," Piper said finally, "okay!"

"I really need your help here," Toni informed him, "okay!"

This time Piper actually put his hand down into the housing for the arc reactor wincing and exclaiming loudly, "oh, there's pus!"

"That looks really wrong," Clint said voicing what Steve had been thinking all along, "I mean I get that there was no other option but that doesn't stop it looking wildly inappropriate."

"It's not pus," Toni deadpanned looking anywhere but at Piper's hand, "It's an inorganic plasmic discharge. It's from the device not my body."

"Well that's a relief," Natasha said wrinkling up her nose, "because I have a feeling I'll end up being the one who has to replace it in future if anything goes wrong because I have the smallest hands."

"It doesn't even happen anymore," Toni told her, "I built in a device when I built the new design of the arc reactor that cancelled out the discharge and installed it into the one in my chest and into all my spares. I will tell each of you where one of them is and JARVIS will make sure that you don't tell the others because I don't want them all being destroyed if a villain somehow gets in here."

"Fair enough," Bruce acknowledged seeing why she couldn't trust everyone with the location of them all in this situation in case the location was forced out of them or they were observed going to get it.

"It smells!" Piper whined although not without good reason.

"Really glad that doesn't happen anymore," Natasha said with a hint of disgust in her voice. She was glad it was Piper dealing with this and not her because it sounded like it was a nightmare.

"Yeah, it does," Toni confirmed, "the copper wire. The copper wire, you got it?"

"Okay," Piper said weakly, "I got it. I got it." He then gently began to pull it out of Toni's body as the woman in question asked for a confirmation, "okay, you got it?"

As it came up it obviously collided with one of the sides because Toni jolted in the chair and let out a yell as a buzzing sound could be heard. "Now, don't let it touch the sides when you're coming out," Toni said rather crossly.

"That looks most painful Lady Toni," Thor said sympathetically, "it reminds me of when…" But the others tactfully intervened to cut Thor off because his sagas could last for days and they actually wanted to get through watching these movies as quickly as they could. Although they had enjoyed the time they had managed to get Thor to admit that he actually had dressed up as woman to retrieve Mjolnir from giants that one time with Loki's help. Toni hadn't stop teasing him good naturedly about his long hair for days.

"I'm sorry," Piper apologised frantically, "I'm sorry!"

"That's what I was trying to tell you before," Toni managed to say weakly. The electrocution had obviously affected her more than she was letting on. The copper wire was now visible as Piper pulled it straight out of Toni's chest. "Now," Toni warned, "make sure that when you pull it out you don't pull out… There's a magnet at the end of it." But Piper couldn't stop in time and the magnet came out with the wire as the heart monitor began to beep rapidly.

"Oh god!" Steve muttered worriedly.

"That was it. You just pulled it out," Toni said slightly annoyed.

"Oh, god!" Piper said hearing the heart monitor beginning to transmit beeps so close together that they almost sounded like they were a single long beep.

"This is going to be too close," Natasha predicted.

"Okay, I was not expecting…" Toni said weakly.

"Okay, what do I do?" Piper interrupted moving it back towards the arc reactor housing but Toni quickly told him, "don't put it back in, don't put it back in!"

"What's wrong?" Piper panicked seeing Toni take in a ragged deep breath.

"Oh nothing," Toni said sarcastically, "I'm just going into cardiac arrest cause you yanked it out like a trout…"

"And there's the Toni we all know," Clint said, "sarcasm in the face of danger really is your style isn't it."

"What!?" Piper shouted, "I thought you said this was safe."

"Technically she said she thought it was safe," Natasha muttered, "which was just another way to say that she was betting with her life again."

Toni didn't dignify this with a retort because she knew that Natasha knew full well that even if the magnet had not been pulled out she was dying anyway with the insufficient connection between the arc reactor and her body so Piper had to remove the wire no matter what. It was hardly her fault that Piper had moved too fast.

"We gotta hurry," Toni said quickly putting the second arc reactor in Piper's hands, "take this. Take this!"

Piper kept muttering 'okay,' to himself as Toni told him, "you gotta switch it out real quick."

"Toni?" Piper said attempting to be comforting but not moving to put the arc reactor in as Toni quickly said, "what?" Piper continued speaking without the arc reactor moving any nearer to Toni's chest, "It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay."

"Is it?" Toni said clearly trying to usher Piper into action.

"It's not going to be okay unless he tries to put the damn thing in," Bruce exclaimed his eyes flashing green.

"Suddenly I am really glad that it will be me who deals with any arc reactor mishaps from now own," Natasha said glaring at the Piper onscreen. She got that he was trying to make Toni feel better but until he got the device in the sentiment was just slowly getting Toni killed. There was no place for sentiment in that situation.

"I'm gonna make this okay," Piper continued as Toni urgently muttered, "let's hope!"

Finally Piper began lowering the cable attached to the arc reactor into its housing as Toni weakly explained what he had to do, "Okay, you're gonna attach that to the base plate. Make sure you…" Before she could finish this sentence there was a click as the arc reactor connected and Toni let out a brief yelp of pain as Piper lowered the actual device towards Toni's chest.

"Finally!" the entire team exclaimed glad that Piper had gotten over his distraction with comforting Toni and actually done something about the fact that he was holding the arc reactor and Toni's life in his hand.

"Was that so hard? That was fun, right?" Toni teased trying to get the teasing tone back as Piper attempted to fasten in the arc reactor eventually she took over with a quick, "Here. I got it. I got it. Here. Nice."

"I have never been so glad for something that wasn't a direct captivity or combat situation to be over," Clint sighed relieved.

Piper stared at his hands which were covered in transparent slime and sighed, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Toni told him, "I feel great. And sorry for the awkwardness again. You okay?"

Piper was half-sighing and half-laughing when he next spoke while Toni laughed without reservation at his expression, "Don't ever, ever, ever, ever ask me to do anything like that ever again."

Toni began her next sentence with a slight stutter clearly struggling to get it out, "I don't have anyone but you."

This caused the happy mood that had been spreading throughout the room to plummet again until Thor cheerfully said, "Well shield brothers and sisters we should simply give thanks that this is no longer the case for our friend Lady Toni."

"Anyway…" Toni said weakly reaching underneath her shirt and removing the electrodes that had been monitoring her heartbeat for the length of the procedure and pulling on a leather jacket.

"What do you want me to do with this?" Piper asked gently picking up the arc reactor from the cave.

"That?" Toni said incredulously, "Destroy it. Incinerate it."

"Why?" Steve asked.

"I didn't want anyone else getting their hands on it because it was too powerful even for a hunk of junk made in a cave," Toni informed him, "I didn't need it. Mind you what he ended up doing with it made me smile!"

"You don't want to keep it?" Piper said uncharacteristically surprised by something Toni did.

"Piper, I've been called many things," Toni sighed, "'Nostalgic,' is not one of them."

"It's hard to be nostalgic if you have nothing to be nostalgic over other than bots that still work perfectly well," Toni muttered to herself managing to keep it mostly to herself although Bruce heard some of what she said and didn't like what he heard.

"Will that be all, Miss Stark?" Piper said taking another brief look at the old arc reactor in his hands.

"That will be all Mr Potts," came the standard reply in their exchange. As soon as the conversation was over with Toni turned away from Piper and began talking to one of her AI's as Piper exited the room, "hey, Butterfingers, come here. What's all this stuff doing on top of my desk? That's my phone, that's a picture of me and my dad. Right there. In the garbage. All that stuff."

Steve knew that he needed to have a conversation with Toni about Howard. The problem was there was never a good time with Toni to bring up her father even when it was only innocently. Steve had to come up with some way of getting her to talk about it or they would never fully be able to put their differences aside.

A/n: I feel really bad because AoA is still not up but it's proving tricky to write. I'm sorry ReadPaxJoy; I will desperately try to get it up tomorrow!