Chapter 40 – An Icing Problem

A/n: OMG! This is chapter 40 and we passed 450 reviews. Excuse me while I faint; this is incredible! So, the Avengers meeting Rhodey one but of course I have to finish the other oneshots for this verse first. Back to the old fashioned method for the next prize. My 500th reviewer will also get a oneshot. Thank you to everyone for wishing me well :) AoA is OFFICIALLY UP! Finally :) Sorry it took so long

cross-over-lover232: Guess I don't really need to leave you a message here but I feel like it anyway :D So hi! BTW Toni doesn't react to that statement because she doesn't want to stay on that topic.

nessa11997: You're welcome!

Tranquillity's Chaos: I'm glad that you look forward to my updates :) That's a lot to look forward to :D Hope those scenes are satisfying for you once I write them

XxxBellaBellaxxX and Booklover2526: I'm glad you liked it and thank you for the well wishes

Dragones: I'm really glad that someone liked that section because I couldn't resist throwing it in. Besides I have to set up their involvement in the sequel somehow. Thank you :)

Smiles123: I'm glad that you like the Natasha/Toni and Clint/Toni moments :) I'm trying hard to set up dynamics between as many characters as I can

paisley15: I'm glad that you liked it :D Yeah, their reactions are going to be fun to write even if that scene isn't fun for the team :) I didn't really think she would somehow

LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: I know poor Natasha :( I'm glad that here she can have a female friend :D Yes, Toni needs to be more careful as does Tony /nods

ReadPaxJoy: Yes, well I had to introduce them and the X-men somehow :D And yes he probably will because you just gave me the plot bunny that will insist on it. I have extra tissues in case I need them whilst writing

twilightjazz: I'm glad that you love it. I have no idea when the action will kick off again because I never know how much I'll cover per chapter. Toni's full name is Antoinette Margaret Stark in my headcanon :)

"Ready?" Toni asked JARVIS before she began yet another countdown, "In three, two, one." On her final count she assumed the position that had worked the best for making a landing earlier and rose much more smoothly than any of her other attempts.

"I can't believe you're actually going through with testing something that experimental without running millions of tests especially since you are actually inside it and in danger if something goes wrong," Bruce exclaimed, "well actually I can, it is you after all, but nevertheless it's highly dangerous even for you."

"Let me be honest here," Toni sighed, "JARVIS could have run as many simulations as he could – which adds up to a substantial amount – but they never would have measured up to the exact conditions the suit would have to face. Plus, a lot of the simulations wouldn't be possible with me in the suit and what would the point of been if the suit was technically working perfectly but it couldn't handle the extra weight and I ended up dead."

"She has a point," Natasha admitted reluctantly although she would still have preferred that Toni would have at least run all the tests that could be performed with her inside the suit before she dove in to testing the suit under conditions that she couldn't control.

Now that she was in the full suit it seemed to be easier for Toni to move as she tilted forward and sped off at high speed through the tunnel that she normally used to get her cars out of the basement.

"It does look like fun though," Clint said admiring the speeds that the early version of the suit was getting up to. He knew that it would make several people that he was acquainted with sick to even think about making turns in something like that at a 'reasonable,' speed never mind at the pace Toni was pushing the suit to but he was among the few who thought it looked exhilarating. Mind you he might just be used to it with the amount of times Toni had picked him up during battles to transport him to a better vantage point or to get him out of imminent danger. She often joked that Clint was using her as a free chauffeur to get him around.

Toni whooped with pure joy as she spiralled out of the tunnel obviously loving the adrenaline rush that flying at those speeds was giving her.

"Biggest adrenaline rush ever," Toni said with a wistful sigh, "I get it every time I make an upgrade to the suit and it can suddenly do something new. It's not the same as it was that first time though."

"So that's why you make so many upgrades just for a couple more miles per hour," Natasha realised, "I just thought you had gone overboard and had gotten so used to making the suits that it was part of your routine."

"Well, having more suits than I should need never does me any harm as you saw in the previous film," Toni pointed out, "they're all fitted with recall devices now so they will fly on if I'm wearing these bracelets." Here she held up her wrests showing two intricately decorated bracelets that resembled the ones she had slipped on whilst talking to Loki, "I had to decorate them a bit more of course and create several different versions so I could wear them with everything and stop it becoming suspicious but it's a lot easier than what happened in Monaco."

This closing statement of course confused everyone but Natasha who had been there for the event. Yet, they simply decided that if it was important it would surely be shown in this movie or referenced in another one. They had learned not to bring large issues up with Toni by this point as she would simply ignore them as she predicted that they would eventually learn about it anyway.

Toni beamed as she flew a little unsteadily over the Pacific Ocean as her suit attempted to get a lock onto the horizon so that she would find it easier to fly in a straight line.

"You definitely updated the display in the suit too," Steve concluded as he looked at how basic the holograms within the suit seemed to be compared to the ones Toni had been shown using in the fight against Loki.

"Of course," Toni said confused that Steve hadn't noticed this sooner, "I had to update the HUD with the suit or they wouldn't have been compatible with the new technology in it. Besides I made some new innovations in my holographic devices and what better place to check which ones worked the best. It's good to have a first-hand experience of if the tech will work or not and if it worth further development so it can be made generally available. Some of it isn't simply because if we wanted it to be cost effective we would have to charge a ridiculous amount for it and hardly anybody has the money to buy something overly expensive just for the sake of having a better model nowadays. Therefore I keep it for use in my houses only and it isn't a waste of my time to have built it."

"Handles like a dream," Toni said happily as she made a wide turn through the sky quickly getting the hang of what she had to do to get the suit to be at its optimum for both speed and manoeuvrability.

"I do not see how the use of your suit is difficult if you mastered the use of the current technology within less than a day," Thor said confused.

"It does seem that way," Toni admitted, "but the problem with that theory is that I built the entire thing so I have an innate knowledge of what every single piece of the suit is designed to do and how to get the best out of it. Once I figured out how much power I needed for flight and how much extra was needed to do difficult manoeuvres I had all the data I needed. I only had that knowledge because I didn't delegate any of the tasks involved in making the suit to anyone but JARVIS who relayed them straight back to me. I even covered the menial tasks even though I could easily have made some of the people in my R&D department do them but by making every piece in my lab I ensured that it is very difficult for anyone to figure out how to work the suit. The later upgrades of course explode after half an hour if I don't remove them in the correct way or they aren't returned to the tower within that period of time," upon seeing Steve's worried look she quickly had, "I can manually deactivate it if I have to remove it in a different way for some reason and we're further than half an hour away from the Tower."

Steve relaxed upon hearing this as he had been worried that this could end up injuring them but Toni did appear to have thought of everything as always. Natasha however was thinking about something else, "that's why you chose the Mark II; anything else would have been too complicated to teach about."

"I was working up to using the others but of course things went sour before I got the chance," Toni confirmed careful not to reveal any pertinent information. Her statement was as ambiguous as she could make it so that Natasha would still understand but the others would remain clueless. She didn't particularly want them going after Rhodey sooner than was absolutely necessary because she knew that if they found out about his treatment of her trust in him they wouldn't hesitate in going after him for her. It was actually sort of comforting knowing that there were now people out there who would hunt down anyone who hurt her and not just because it would be bad publicity if they didn't (aka Howard). She had never had that before.

As she flew back in towards the mainland the HUD instantly began picking up details on the nearby landmarks. The main details on the screen were of the Santa Monica Ferris Wheel as Toni watched the rollercoaster rocket past it. Her targeted vision zoomed in on a little boy and girl eating ice cream in one of the Ferris Wheel compartments. The little boy was the first to spot her and he became so distracted that his ice cream fell right off the cone.

"You certainly make an impact on the kids," Steve said.

"As hard as it might be to believe they have an impact on me as well," Toni informed him bluntly, "the thanks that I love getting the most are the ones that come from the children because they aren't thanking us for political reasons, they're simply thanking us because they admire us and they think that what we do is cool. Maybe that viewpoint is a little naïve but I admire the naïveté in a way. I'm glad those children to get to have it."

Nobody really knew how to respond this because Toni Stark caring that much about children was a novel idea. She'd never really talked about them before and while they had seen that she was perfectly nice to the children that came up to her and asked for her autograph or to tell her that she was awesome and that they wanted their own Iron Man suit but she hadn't appeared to be especially fond of them. Only she appeared to have realised what none of them had; the children weren't trying to gain something by using flattery! They generally loved the Avengers. Come to think of it maybe Toni hadn't set up that Avengers gift store chain just to annoy them. Maybe she had done it because she knew that the children of the world wanted to be like them and would love to have something to play with to do with them.

It did not take Toni long to put some considerable distance between herself and the Ferris Wheel covering what would take a car at least an hour to travel in heavy traffic before veering upwards.

"I have a feeling that this part of the test is not going to end well," Phil said nervously. He knew that Toni pushed herself to the limits of what she was capable of whenever she could and he had no doubts that this situation would be exactly the same as any other in that respect. He also knew that Toni had obviously changed the material for her suits seeing as this one was silver and all the later ones were red and gold and looked slightly different. No doubt she was going to encounter a problem with her choice of material.

"All right, let's see what this thing can do," Toni said as she continued climbing, "What's SR-71's record?"

"You really are going to try and go that high," Natasha said with a sigh knowing that this had already happened and Toni was still alive so there was no point in stressing about it unnecessarily but she still didn't want to watch Toni pushing herself over her limits again. Mind you who knows maybe some of the reckless things Toni did didn't even hit the limits she had for herself.

"The altitude record for fixed wing flight is 85,000 feet ma'am," JARVIS informed her bringing up the relevant details on the SR-71 Blackbird up on the screen for her to see. The only other thing showing on the screen was the close up of the moon that Toni was steadily approaching.

"I think you've had your fill of space travel," Bruce stated, "so please don't do any more of it!"

"I make no promises because it may become necessary on future occasions for me to travel into space," Toni replied, "better to not make a promise than to break one. Less disappointment that way."

Bruce couldn't help but wonder if she had gotten that particular philosophy from Howard and Obie and she had managed to convince herself that they were her own views. It did sound like something that Obie would say from what they had heard from him so far and Toni did seem to care about his approval in these scenes although clearly she didn't anymore from some of the comments she had been making about his actions throughout the course of this film.

"Records are made to be broken," Toni said excitedly, "come on!"

She kept pushing herself higher until ice began to form over the front of the HUD making the screen falter around the edges and JARVIS informed Toni, "ma'am, there is a potentially fatal build-up of ice occurring."

"Keep going!" Toni shouted ignoring JARVIS.

"Toni," Steve said bewildered, "why are you ignoring JARVIS when he used the word 'fatal' to describe the ice build-up?"

"I'm assuming you know what it feels like when you're on an adrenaline rush," Toni responded, "well it was amplified by at least four times because of the experience I was having and I was having trouble focusing on anything but where I was going and pushing the suit as far as I could push it. I didn't actually clearly hear what JARVIS was saying to me. It has never happened since mainly because I solved the icing problem and I never got the same adrenaline rush from another one of my suits and the novelty wore off as I already explained."

"Higher!" Toni muttered in a strained tone as the ice build-up only worsened almost completely covering the surface of the suit. Eventually it got so bad that one of her foot repulsors completely gave out and the light in the eyes of the suit began to flicker.

Steve was having great difficult avoiding ruining Toni's $900 armchair again because he was getting really nervous upon seeing this scene even knowing that Toni would recover from this. He didn't actually know how long ago this was of course which didn't help at all because it just meant that Toni could have been pretty badly injured. Anything other than death, permanent paralysis and amputation of a limb was still a possibility and that left an alarming amount of possibilities.

Eventually all power to the suit cut off and it seized up as Toni let out a strained gasp and then began to fall unable to stop herself from screaming out loud.

Normally Clint would have found the idea of Toni being scared enough to scream funny because the billionaire didn't seem to be bothered by anything that most sane people including SHIELD agents were afraid off. Of course she had that fear of water but after seeing what had happened to her in Afghanistan that fear made much more sense. He also admired the act that Toni had managed to buy Natasha a bathtub because she hadn't just cleared her suite of bathtubs and replaced them with showers. She had done this with the entirety of the tower which meant she was nervous of even having the possibility she would come into contact with a pool of water and yet she was still willing to allow Natasha her comfort after a mission. The mere thought of her doing something that serious for a friend was enough to make Clint respect her even more than he had already. She was very different from the reports he had heard of her. Of course he now knew that Toni had been acting for half of them and that the others had been relayed from Nat's mangled report so he shouldn't really be surprised that Toni was mostly the complete opposite of the reports. It was actually quite impressive that she was still fooling Fury into thinking she was the picture of an arrogant narcissist when Fury was in her own words 'the spy!'

"We iced up JARVIS!" Toni said hoping the AI was still online, "Deploy flaps! JARVIS!"

"So you did prepare for this eventuality," Phil said relieved that Toni hadn't completely dismissed icing as a possible problem, "you just didn't predict that it would get so bad that JARVIS would go offline."

As the lights of the city became clearer it was clear that some of the ice was breaking away due to the fall but not enough of it, "come on, we have to break the ice!" Toni said desperately.

"Yes," Bruce said getting caught up in the movie, "yes you do."

Everyone else was so caught up watching this scene as well that Toni didn't see the point in pointing out to them that they were talking to a movie and that she was sitting next to them and she was obviously still breathing just fine aside from the usual difficulties she had due to the hunk of metal in her chest.

Somehow even though she was in free fall Toni managed to grab a hold of the manual release and twisted it causing the flaps to deploy and the ice to come racing off the suit which continued to fall for a while.

"At least you had a back-up plan," Natasha said relieved.

"I always have a back-up plan," Toni said rather indignantly. The doubt that they had in her sometimes was a little unsettling. There were several safety measures that could be performed to save her from that circumstance even in that suit; only two of them needed JARVIS to still be online. Although the switch for the manual release had been difficult to get to whilst free falling so she had improved that in her later models.

Just as the buildings of Malibu became clearly defined the suit's power came back and Toni levelled herself out and flew between the cars on the freeway laughing raucously.

"It was half shock and half exhilaration," Toni said defensively upon receiving a couple of glares for making light of the fact that she could very easily have died in that situation.

She pulled up as soon as she could and zoomed back over the Pacific towards the Malibu mansion.

"At least you were alright in the end Lady Toni," Thor said just as relieved as everyone else. The chair he had been sitting on was slightly signed from the lightning that had formed on his hands due to his worry.

As Toni lowered herself neatly above the roof hovering mere inches above it she commanded, "Kill power," only the weight of the suit combined with the aerodynamic position Toni was in made it like a missile and it crashed through the roof, plummeting through the grand piano before she ended up in the lab crashing onto one of her racing cars as the car alarms blared and Dummy sprayed her with the fire extinguisher.

Even the sympathetic, "ouch!" that Natasha gave Toni in response to this fall was somewhat ruined by the fact that she was chuckling along with everyone else about the fact that Dummy was once again wielding his fire extinguisher where there was definitely no trace of fire.

A/n: Hope you guys all enjoy this chapter which I know some of you have been looking forward to. The party should be next and it will be either the next one or two chapter probably.