Chapter 39 – Running Before You Can Walk
A/n – I'm so glad that so many of you seem to believe I wrote Thor well. Phew, that's a relief because I was really nervous because there will need to be a lot of them when they're watching the Thor movie. Anyone who hasn't voted on the poll should do so now if they want to influence the 450 oneshot :D A few votes could still change everything
cross-over-lover232: Well I hope I can make those scenes good for you to read and I'm glad you're enjoying it. Toni and Bruce could rule the world if they wanted to :) Apparently the Tesseract can. Yeah, Tasha is amazing. I don't have time to fix the slip ups because I update in the early hours of the morning every day. I try to catch as many as I can whilst writing. And no, Toni doesn't work with them around Steve. I think that's Steve's best line too. I'm glad I got you shipping the Bruce/Toni.
youwannabekate: Yay! I'm glad you liked them because I usually get annoyed if people portray Thor as stupid because he is thousands of years old and a prince. I was worried that mine came across that way. Yes I am, and yes I did and it was sooooooo amazing! Still prefer David Tennant though /shrugs How's your fic going by the way?
ReadPaxJoy: Yes! That was what I was aiming for :) You're very welcome and I really am trying to finish AoA but everyone wants a chapter of this as well so I'm having to multitask
Ganondorf-Lover: That is very flattering thank you very much and I'm glad you enjoyed it. At least my 4am typing sprees aren't going to waste.
Booklover2526: My explanation for Thor not figuring it out is he is an alien. So many things are different on Earth that he would be trying not to make any assumptions but that's just my opinion. Love throwing in Bruce/Toni; have to add some more Clintoni soon but they're not talking at the moment because of her breakdown.
Post U Later: I know; he's a total pain and it is such a relief that he dies in the movie.
XxxBellaBellaxxX: I'm glad you liked that scene. Glad that you liked it.
SpectrumLight: I'm glad that you like me story. And sometimes I'm surprised by how fast I update this story :D
Guest: Thank you for telling me that the Thor's part was fine :) Yeah Obie is very freaky
nessa11997: You're welcome :)
Avengers-Are-My-World-23: You're welcome and yeah I've noticed because I've seen some of the others. Plenty more to write though so there's still time for me to go AWOL. Don't jinx it
ReenReen: Well, I think it's perfectly reasonable to make you seeing as it's only a day. And you're welcome.
Harm Marie: I'm glad.
Natasha watched nervously as she knew that the moment where Toni would confront Obie was coming up soon and events would occur that would culminate in the death of the sinister businessman. And before that Toni might get herself injured again whilst working on the Iron Man suit. She had no doubt that Toni would get drawn into the work on her suit just as much as she got absorbed in her more 'ordinary' projects. But focusing on the thrill of the suit and the technology of it might distract Toni and that would only end in disaster. The problem was that Toni's definition of dangerous wasn't even on the same planet as everyone else's. Of course Natasha now knew that this was due to the arc reactor causing her constant debilitating pain that would cause an ordinary person to be bedridden and unable to actually live a normal life but Toni against all odds continued to push through it and live more than a normal life. Yet any other life threatening injury she brushed off as if it was nothing more than a scratch and got away with it because the suit hid her injuries. Natasha could distinctly remember that Toni had used this to her advantage during their first battle against Amora and that she had been reprimanded for it when her injury was discovered. Not that it had affected Toni's reluctance to report in injuries in any way whatsoever in the long run. Or even in the short term really as she had gone into the next fight with a burn on her arm from an accident in the lab. Natasha could safely say she would force medical attention on her friend if she had to before one of the wounds became fatal and Natasha lost her only female friend/drinking buddy.
"Day 11," Toni told the camera as she stood in the same place that she had been in the previous test that was shown only this time she was equipped with her new repulsor powered flight stabilisers and more knowledge of what it would take to actually fly, "test 37, configuration 2.0. For lack of a better option Dummy is still on fire safety."
"Oh dear," Steve murmured quietly. He knew that exposing Dummy to fire extinguishers made him more likely to use them which was why Toni had recently locked the majority of them away except for the few that she had to have on hand for safety reasons. Of course they were more often used by the AI for spraying anyone who wasn't Toni or Bruce who deigned to enter the research labs even if Toni had called them there to show them a new invention. No matter what they did to try and avoid it they always seemed to end up with gas or foam in their face when they entered the labs unless Toni had managed to get Dummy working on something else at the time. It was the second time that this had happened to Steve when he had finally decided that Toni wasn't insane for thinking that her robots had personalities of their own because they really did. There was no way Toni thought ahead to program that into a bot when only Piper and Toni entered those labs in the tower anyway before Toni had become a member of the Avengers and ended up inviting everyone to live with her.
"If you douse me again and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to a city college," Toni threatened.
"It would probably work better if Dummy actually believed you because he keeps dousing people and you haven't sent him to a city college yet," Bruce laughed, "because you never could because he was your very first AI."
"So," Toni said with a shrug, "at the time it was a fresh threat and I really hated being sprayed with that fire extinguisher because it sometimes messed with some of the tech and I had to redo it which when I was first starting out took me much longer than it does nowadays. Plus do you know how hard fire extinguisher foam is to get out of clothes."
"All right," Toni said redirecting her attention to the camera, "nice and easy. Seriously, just gonna start off with 1% thrust capacity."
"If it was anyone else," Phil said shaking his head with a fond smile, "but knowing what 10% thrust capacity of an eleven day old version did I wouldn't be surprised if you hit your head off a wall again."
"No more hitting your head off walls," Natasha interjected quickly.
She took a deep breath clearly at least a little nervous seeing as her previous tests hadn't gone well and began counting down, "three, two, one." This time the repulsors activated properly despite a few sparks flying out of them. Toni floated there for about a minute before making an unsteady landing.
"That is really impressive for only eleven days of practice and less with the technology that actually works," Clint admitted, "how many tests had you done with that version of the repulsor system before this point?"
"I think that was the first time I used that particular system," Toni said thoughtfully, "JARVIS?"
"Test 37, configuration 2.0 was indeed the first time that system was put to use ma'am," JARVIS informed the listening group.
As she took in the shocked looks from the other Avengers she couldn't resist the eye roll that accompanied her next statement, "oh come on; you know me. I've always connected with technology much better than I have with people. Besides it's really just physics and hello! I have a doctorate in Physics so I know what I'm talking about okay. It was never going to be that hard for me to work it out. Besides that's only 1% power and it doesn't sustain flight for long as you just saw. It was easy to float with them; not so easy to direct myself at this stage."
Toni turned to Dummy and told him, "please, don't follow me around with it, either, cause I feel like I'm gonna catch on fire spontaneously." Dummy drooped a little upon hearing this comment clearly upset.
"You should let Noble Dummy wield his fire extinguisher as he wishes," Thor said with a frown.
This resulted in a very audible scoff from Clint as he muttered, "that's easy enough for you to say. You don't go to the lab often enough to get doused by him regularly so you still find it amusing. If that AI douses me with foam one more time…"
The mere implication of a threat against one of her bots elicited a death glare from Toni and some sort of silent conversation between the two women in the room because moments afterwards Natasha delivered a powerful slap to Clint's face that left him cringing.
"Hey!" Clint exclaimed, "you were my friend first Natasha."
"Yeah well," Toni said, "I provide the alcohol and the intelligent conversation. You provide everyone with a punching bag when you threaten a part of my family." The AI's were the only people in her life that had always been true to her because they were literally incapable of not doing so. Hence any threat against them including an implied one was the most heinous thing that could be said in front of Toni aside from comparing her to her father. Even positively was still a no go area as Steve had found out early on in his stay at Avengers Tower. After an entire month of being hunted down by every AI in the building (the fact that every so called common appliance in the place was actually an AI made the frequency of attacks on Steve much easier to explain) and attacked. The most shocking part of this for the time was that Toni had locked herself in her lab for most of that time and had no idea that her AI's were doing this. Yet another clue for the other Avengers that the AI's in the building had their own minds.
"Just stand down!" Toni told him finally, "If something happens, then come in."
"Probably the best way to go about warning him off," Bruce acknowledged, "telling him he can definitely still douse you with the gas if something happens straight after chastising him should raise his spirits again."
"And that's exactly what proves that you spend the most time with Toni," Clint pointed out remembering a time when the other Avengers had accused him of monopolizing the time they could be spending attempting to get Toni to trust them at least a little with her in the lab when he could 'easily' have convinced her to come out and join in the team bonding activity Steve had organised.
"Well duh," Toni said before Bruce could speak, "the times that I'm together with the rest of you I can't talk like myself and it gets annoying. So I end up spending the time with Bruce because he actually understands when I'm on about."
"And again," Toni said turning away from Dummy, "let's bring it up to 2.5. Three, two, one."
This time Toni was launched higher into the air by the repulsors and she actually began to move about in the air drifting backwards towards You and the camera. The boots seemed to be releasing some sort of steam from their mechanisms as Toni began to move in the opposite direction at a rapid pace trying to steady herself in the air.
"It does look harder than you make it out to be now," Clint admitted reluctantly. It made any laughs he could have gotten out of Toni's mishaps almost impossible because she would be sure just to tell him that he could try out some of the old tech and he knew that Natasha would back her up and Clint would actually end up doing it instead of it being a joke while he may have learned more about technology since joining the Avengers and meeting Toni but he probably wasn't even proficient enough to take off. Inevitably after being humiliated by Toni having to help him take off he would probably pull a Toni from the first test they'd seen only he would probably seriously injure himself and end up in Toni's medical bay.
Toni in her attempt to control the direction she was travelling in actually made a turn to the left and ended up hovering over her cars muttering, "Okay, this is where I don't want to be!"
Steve wasn't sure he wanted to watch this scene if any of those cars was even slightly damaged in the process of Toni testing her suit. He had been curious about exactly how much Toni was actually spending on trivial items since he had just found out that money would now buy less now so something that technologically advanced had to be expensive. And unlike the suits and Toni's other technological advances he could actually look up the prices of cars even if it took him much longer to work Google than it would for anyone who was born and raised in this century. Touch screens were still not one of his favourite things about the new century. The sheer amount of money that Toni had spent on the cars in New York had made him deathly afraid to go anywhere near one of them in case he scratched it because even that had to be expensive to fix on a car that cost that much money. He hadn't even taken into account then that those were just the cars here in New York and Toni obviously had residences all over the world with more expensive vehicles in each one. It really put into perspective for him exactly how much petty cash Toni had lying around just waiting for her to spend on frivolous things that she took a fancy to. He was probably lucky that he hadn't seen Toni purchase a bar on a whim yet as she was apparently prone to do because he thought that casual use of so much money might actually cause him to pass out.
"Not the car, not the car," Toni muttered as she inevitably drifted over car after car focusing on keeping her current altitude so the sparks flying from the impromptu suit from burning the cars. She quickly cleared the cars only to keep moving forward scattering papers and blueprints everywhere as she muttered the word, "table!" resignedly.
"If I was going to destroy something it might as well be papers that I can put back together within an hour from the data stored in my head," Toni muttered, "would have taken at least a day for me to get a rush order to replace a ruined car." The other Avengers were growing increasingly surprised at just how used to Toni's remarks they were becoming because this comment didn't even break their carefully composed poker faces. They had reluctantly grown used to Toni throwing money around and getting special privileges because of it because it made their lives a million times easier. Most of them still didn't like the fact that her actions still felt a bit like charity (this was mainly Steve) but they knew better than to undermine something Toni did purely because no matter how much coercion it took to get even a hint of a confession out of her on the subject they knew it was a sign that she really did like them.
As she was nearing the wall at the other end of the garage/lab Toni raised the repulsors and managed to halt her progress for a second before they sent her flying backwards scattering yet more papers. As she neared the camera again she muttered, "Could be worse! Could be worse! We're fine! Okay."
"Yes," Phil acknowledged, "you could have ended up flying into a brick wall again and come away with more than a few bruises which I don't doubt you had after that impact."
"I'll admit to having bruises after it Phil," Toni laughed, "I'll even admit to having superficial cuts. But it only happened the once in that first test so don't worry about it. I am perfectly fine at this particular moment in time."
As she reached her starting point she drew her hands in close to her body and this appeared to steady her as she descended with a controlled turn and made her neatest landing yet. Dummy began to lower the fire extinguisher once again pointing it directly at Toni but she noticed and protested with a loud, 'no!' causing Dummy to droop again.
"Can't you please extend your protection over Bruce to us so I can come and see the updates you made to my Widow's Bites without ending up covered in foam?" Natasha asked knowing that it was unlikely Toni could stop him doing it completely but at least Toni could try and get her some protection from the fire extinguisher wielding AI.
"Probably not," Toni said with a shrug, "I didn't give Bruce my protection Dummy just took a liking to him and decided he didn't need to be doused anymore. I guess you should just spend more time around him so he sees you're not going to burst into flame around him. He's been a lot worse since the Fantastic 4 visited and Johnny Storm insisted on doing his Human Torch act in my lab! So go and take the issue up with him." In fact Toni was quite keen to see this happen because Johnny and his attempts to flirt with her were highly annoying and had been getting more frequent lately as he sensed the tension between Piper and herself. Sue, Reed and Ben attempted to discourage it as much as they could but they weren't always around to stop him. Now that she was single Johnny was going to be even more of a nightmare. That thought actually filled her with more despair than her actual break up with Piper had. It wasn't like the old days where she would just grab a new conquest every hour and he would go away because she refused to be that person anymore so she would have to put up with Johnny being insufferable. He also had no imagination; 'The Thing,' honestly!
"Wait, Bruce got attacked by Dummy with his fire extinguisher," Steve said shocked.
"Yeah," Toni said rolling her eyes, "you just weren't living here when it was happening. He even used to douse me without being told to so why exactly would Bruce be an exception?"
"Yeah," Toni said breathing heavily, "I can fly."
"I'm still kind of jealous," Natasha admitted reiterating something she had said to Toni back when she was pretending to be 'Natalie Rushman,' "Flying without a plane looks exhilarating."
Toni took a single step forward and instantly JARVIS activated the systems that quickly put on the silver boots of the Mark II suit and began screwing in the bolts that connected the exterior surface of her arms to the systems she was already wearing. When he was done she picked up the mask and placed it on saying, "JARVIS, are you there?"
"I didn't know you had another silver version of the suit," Steve said confused, "well at least not one that looks exactly like that."
"It was given a makeover," Toni said quietly not wanting to get into the subject of Rhodey stealing that version of the suit. It was almost painful for her to see it in his original form seeing as the army had mutilated it and Rhodey had attacked her in it. Of course it had been virtually useless for some of the purposes she commonly used the suit for today but still she had created it and she got territorial over her inventions especially her AI's and her suits.
"At your service, ma'am," JARVIS informed her as the HUD within the suit fired up at Toni's command of, "engage Heads Up Display."
"Check," JARVIS informed her.
"Import all preferences from home interface," Toni told him.
"And this is when you put JARVIS into your suits," Natasha said, "I didn't realise he was in some of the earlier models. Mind you I wouldn't know how far apart some of the suits are from each other technologically wise and there is no point in explaining it because even Bruce might not get it."
"I probably wouldn't," Bruce admitted, "engineering definitely isn't my field."
"Will do, ma'am," JARVIS responded.
As Toni looked around the room targets on the HUD focused on each of her cars displaying the details of each flickering across the screen and sliding to the side almost immediately to make way for new information.
"I will never understand how you are able to process that much information that rapidly Lady Toni," Thor informed her.
"Trust me you don't want to," Toni said wincing, "I accidentally gave Charles Xavier and Jean Grey headaches the first time I met with the X-men because they got into my head and couldn't cope with what they found."
"All right," Toni said as yet more information flashed before her eyes, "what do you say?"
"I have indeed been uploaded ma'am," JARVIS relayed to her, "We're online and ready."
"I've been meaning to ask," Clint said abruptly, "why does JARVIS have a British accent?"
"I felt like it when I was making him," Toni said with a shrug. There really had been no other reason for making JARVIS British other than the fact that at the time she had kind of had an obsession with the accent and it had become part of the AI's character.
"Can we start the virtual walk-around?" Toni inquired.
"Importing preferences and calibrating virtual environment," JARVIS stated.
"Do a check on control surfaces," Toni told him.
"As you wish," JARVIS replied and the shot changed to show the exterior of the suit as all of the flaps and joints began to move around working their way up the suit just to check that everything was working as it should be.
"I had to be able to move in the thing," Toni muttered.
"Test complete," JARVIS said as the shoulders of the suit stopped moving, "Preparing to power down and begin diagnostics."
"Yeah," Toni said indicating that wasn't her plan, "Tell you what. Do a weather and ATC check. Start listening in on ground control."
Steve paled upon hearing this. Surely she wasn't actually going to take off on a suit that she had only just confirmed worked whilst still on the ground. Mind you this was Toni; anything was possible with her.
JARVIS brought up the relevant information for her but was clearly against the idea of jumping straight in to a test flight, "Ma'am, there are still terabytes of calculations needed before an actual flight is…"
"Just this once I hope you listened to JARVIS," Bruce muttered quietly knowing that his wishes were going to be in vain. Toni didn't listen to JARVIS about situations like the one on the screen nowadays and he had no doubts that she was just as reckless and stubborn back then if not more so because she didn't feel she had anyone but Piper and now she had the rest of the Avengers as well as Phil.
"JARVIS!" Toni interrupted carefully, "Sometimes you got to run before you can walk."
"Great," Natasha sighed, "Toni's about to blast off in an experimental suit. Can this scene get any worse?"
A/N – Err… obviously yes Natasha. Sorry, this isn't as long as my normal Monday updates but I typed this in like an hour because I've been very ill all day and I thought I wouldn't manage to get this up at all. So, any mistakes are probably because of that too :)