Chapter 42 – Crashing Your Own Party

A/n: We're getting closer and closer to the next bits of action in the movie for all of you who were looking forward to them :) Once again thank you so much for all the nice things you've been saying. I haven't had a single unkind review in 41 chapters which means the world to me.

McGriddle96: They're still not as bad as mine so /shrugs And one of the sequels will indeed by Bruce/Toni because I just love them :)

XxxBellaBellaxxX: Sarcastic JARVIS is the best :) Glad you liked it.

Booklover2526: It might be in here and it might not. It's really the scene that Obie begins to be seen as the bad guy even if it's just because he disapproves of Toni's new direction. It'll be fun to write them getting more and more angry at Obie for all his transgressions.

youwannabekate: Yay for adorable Clint! :) I just wanted more people than Steve to be supportive of the team dynamic and this was the perfect opportunity :D Aunt Peggy is one of my fave headcanons

LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: Aww, sorry but I have to be realistic even if it makes people sad. And Toni is treated badly by a lot of people in my headcanons /shrugs

Post U Later: Yeah, they needed the laughs because it's about to get serious again. The pure gold suit was just AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! I wouldn't be seen dead in it.

nessa11997: You're welcome :)

paisley15: I think it's more of a guest of honour thing than her party seeing as Piper organises all of them :D Glad you liked it

babyliss12: I'm glad you like Toni even if you were sceptical at first :)

Wolfswaechterin: Thank you for the compliment :) I update as quickly as I can :D Glad you're liking this story

ReadPaxJoy: Even if it's your own :D If you don't get to review I'll totally understand :D I'll just look forward to hearing from you on the next one you can review.

Toni's Audi R8 once again zoomed down a highway only this one was a little busier than the one she had driven to the airfield on. She weaved in and out of the cars at speeds that not even the R8 should have been able to reach.

"You're still modifying your cars then I guess," Bruce said knowing from earlier on in the movie that Toni had gotten started on that part of the family business at the age of six.

"The car companies started paying me to work out how their engines could be improved after people started trashing their cars trying to get them to the speeds the tuned up versions I created could manage," Toni told him, "but people were claiming on the insurance saying that the cars obviously had the potential to go that fast and saying that there should have been a warning. People were winning the cases until someone called me up and got my testimony that I had fiddled with the engine to get that much speed and they could no longer claim. But the customers still wanted those speeds so I began working freelance for the companies which were willing to provide the best investment for Stark Industries. So I end up switching it around every three months or so."

Any shocked looks that followed this description were met with a glare and a snide, "I ran a business for nearly fifteen years. Yes, Piper handled most of the paperwork but I didn't always have Piper. I know how these things work they just mess with my creative processes so I try not to think about them too much."

As the R8 pulled up outside the benefit the valet noticed the number plate and immediately ran over to open the door for Toni and offer her his hand to help her out of her car. Toni accepted it but that was probably because she was wearing a floor-length red dress and killer heels.

Clint let out a loud wolf whistle at the sight of Toni all dressed up as he only saw her dressed like that at the benefits they occasionally all had to attend. He didn't like them at all and as such had arranged his SHIELD missions to overlap with them as much as possible. And the few that he had been forced into attending Toni had spent so much time socialising and networking for the Avengers that she was always completely surrounded by diplomats and politicians.

"I'm very impressed that you were able to drive in those shoes," Natasha said distracting Toni just before she began tearing into Clint for wolf whistling at her as she found it quite disrespectful.

"Why would it be impressive to drive in high heeled shoes Ladies Natasha and Toni?" Thor said. He had only driven in an Earth car once or twice and those times had inevitably ended up in at least moderate damage to the car in question. He just couldn't get a grasp on the multitude of buttons and what they were all supposed to do. To this day he was still convinced that the air conditioning was the button that controlled the brakes.

"Heels are not convenient for using the pedals Thor," Toni explained, "especially stilettos which are the type of heels I normally wear to parties and galas. They often slip off the pedals which means you have to have quick reflexes to compensate and stop yourself from stalling the car. I do it all the time though so I'm used to doing it."

"Quick reflexes are a bit of an understatement," Natasha pointed out, "you barely have a second before the car stalls and when it's a sports car it can be pretty painful."

"True," Toni acknowledged.

As Toni walked onto the red carpet more and more people began to notice her and try and catch her attention as Obadiah Stane was making a statement to a reporter trying to save Stark Industries stocks, "Weapons manufacturing is only one small part of what Stark Industries is all about, and our partnership with the fire and rescue community…"

"As much as I hate to admit it that is actually a pretty good recovery," Natasha sighed. She wasn't keen on the idea of thinking that Stane was good at anything but he had proved himself to be a decent liar and she guessed he had to be good at running a business too if he was friends with Howard Stark and took over for him whilst Toni was AWOL. Still, he had more faults than he did positive attributes and that on top of his smarmy 'I Know Best' attitude was enough for Natasha to be glad he was dead. Toni still flinched every time his name was mentioned in conjunction with some sort of 'good work,' the military would claim he had done and through all the people who raved on about what an amazing person he had been.

Suddenly Obie was distracted from the interview as people began screaming in a way that could only signify the arrival of Toni Stark herself to everyone's shock including judging by his facial expression Stane's.

"Stane didn't know you at all either," Steve pointed out, "even I knew that you wouldn't be able to stay out of public for longer than a few weeks. I'm surprised you made it that long."

"Stane knew me the least out of everyone in this film so far," Toni scoffed, "he didn't consider me worth the effort as he was the one controlling my public appearances and that was all he needed to control the media to follow his own interests and that's what he was interested in."

"Hey, Toni, remember me?" a particularly underdressed supermodel asked but Toni quickly dismissed her with a, "sure don't."

"One of the few girls that I truly regret sleeping with because she was just plain clingy," Toni said her face twisting into an expression of pure disgust just looking at the girl.

"One of the few?!" Bruce said incredulously.

"Well," Toni told him, "I wouldn't sleep with any of them anymore without a relationship purely because they'd need to know about the arc reactor beforehand. Well not purely but it's one of the biggest reasons. Besides why should I regret doing something that if it happened to hurt anybody it was me? Those girls don't regret it so why should I. I had some fun and now I don't do that anymore so it should be a non-issue. It's not like I bring them back to the tower on a regular basis or anything."

"You look great, Hef," Toni said patting the back of a guy who was surrounded by a bunch of giggling girls although when he looked around Toni had already passed him and he seemed to think he had hallucinated her words.

"Isn't that the guy who still believes that everyone other than Toni is a hoax?" Steve realised.

"That would be Hef, yes," Toni laughed, "and he only believes that the Iron Man suit isn't part of the hoax because he was at the Stark Expo where it was displayed."

"We're going to have a great quarter," Obadiah said attempting to return to his interview as the other reporters began shouting out Toni's name desperate to be the first to get a statement from the woman herself.

"What's the world coming to when a girl's got to crash her own party?" Toni quipped not at all bothered about interrupting Obie mid-statement.

"I'm pretty sure that's the first party I've ever had to crash," Toni said thoughtfully, "and it was my own. Normally it's the opposite and my schedule can't actually take every party I'm invited to because so many of them clash. Even if I struck those off the list and just went to all of the ones that were physically possible for me to go to the company would crash and burn because I wouldn't have the time to make anything. And that's not including my own parties impromptu or necessary."

"Look at you," Obie said with an obviously fake smile, "you look gorgeous. Hey, what a surprise! Wasn't expecting to see you here."

"I'll see you inside," Toni told him bluntly before beginning to try and navigate her way towards the building through the crowd that was still clamouring for news about her supposedly self-imposed seclusion after dropping a massive bombshell on her investors and board and her sudden reappearance.

"You knew something was up," Clint said. This statement was based on the fact that he had begun to suspect a while ago that Obie had filed the injunction against Toni because he clearly wasn't happy with her new direction any more than the board was. And Obie's poker face was especially lousy in that moment (not that it wasn't always lousy as he had proved earlier on) and Toni could see through people almost as well as the spies on the team could.

"Of course," Toni replied, "his poker face is the absolute worst poker face in the world. And I knew he didn't like the way I was going as I matured after Afghanistan. He was desperate for the Toni who would follow him blindly because he was the only one who was nice to me."

Obie quickly tried to stop her from causing any problems in his plans though by halting her with a quiet, "Hey. Listen, take it slow, all right? I think I got the board right where we want them."

"Right where you want them you mean," Bruce snapped having realised what Obie's real intentions with the board were and they certainly weren't directed at making himself and Toni look like an inseparable team who supported each other's decisions. Thor also recognised the look in Stane's eyes from several encounters he had on Asgard during royal meetings but he was hoping that on Earth those sorts of men could be identified by something different as he didn't want that sort of man close to Lady Toni attempting to influence her decisions. After all so many other things were different from Asgard here on Midgard so why wouldn't this be. But deep down he knew this hope was in vain because people's emotions seemed to be the only variable that remained the same.

"You got it," Toni said playing along perfectly her poker face in comparison to Stane's was absolutely flawless, "Just cabin fever. I'll just be a minute."

"You'd think Stane would learn from merely being around your poker face Toni," Phil said, "how can someone's poker face remain that lousy when you work in business? Aren't businessmen supposed to be able to lie there way out of situations?"

"Not all of us are international super spies Phil," Bruce pointed out.

"Besides not having a poker face in business can be just as useful as having one because people believe that you're always telling the truth and so they trust you more as they believe you can't lie without a poker face," Toni said providing the voice of experience on the matter, "but you can tell a half-truth and it will sail past the radar unlike a lie which can become twisted up and leave gaping holes for people to use to pick apart your story. It's not a technique that I usually use because I can keep my facts straight but I've been known to tell half-truths in business deals on occasion."

"You lie to investors?" Steve said not quite able to grasp the concept that in business everybody lies. And that believing Toni's lies was a lot better than falling for someone else's because if you were truly a good person and you were passionate about your work then you would get more than she had promised you to get you to join up in the first place after she had developed the needed goods. But if you were bad for the company because you were only looking out for your own interests and trying to cheat Toni out of something then you would probably end up splashed all over YouTube and Facebook under the headline, 'Toni Stark Disses Another A**Hole,' and be vilified in the press because Toni knew exactly how to twist things. She did not appreciate gold diggers and bottom feeders in her company who weren't willing to work for a living. Even her secretaries tended to be dedicated family woman who needed the job and the money rather than the attractive blondes that some businessmen preferred to entertain their guests. Many former housewives who had fallen on bad times suddenly became stunningly well off as Toni sought out as many of them as she could and found a place for them in her company. In a way they reminded her of her mother who had totally lost herself in her marriage to Howard because he liked women who were the opposite of Maria Stark. This was another reason that Toni couldn't understand why he had felt the need to marry Maria and make her the woman he wanted rather than settling for one of his many devoted followers.

"Everyone lies in business Steve," Toni said rolling her eyes, "otherwise the economy would grind to a halt. Normally I don't need to because my work speaks for itself but I've sweet talked my way out of rough patches for the company with a few half-truths and yes outright lies. I guarantee I'm one of the most genuine businesswomen in the world and I should know because I spend a lot of time around them."

Inside the hall people were milling around on the dance floor swaying in a feeble imitation of an actual dance whilst they chatted and chugged down their glasses of champagne. The open bar also had a multitude of people gathered around it picking up a new glass of bubbly or of something stronger.

"Looks about as interesting as all of the other ones you go to," Natasha deadpanned. The events were thoroughly boring and everyone there was either a suck up, a poser or one of Toni's 'friends,' who didn't seem to know her at all.

"Except for that one gala we both attended," Toni said with a smirk.

"Oh yeah," Natasha said wondering how on Earth she had managed to forget about that one, "that was fun. The looks on the faces of the condescending assholes who were talking to us were hilarious."

The others thought about asking what all that was about and how they had somehow managed to make one of the boring events fun for the both of them as well as put some guys who were probably hitting on them down but their smirks put them off. Evil was too small of a word to describe those expressions.

"Give me a Scotch," Toni said as she walked up to the bartender, "I'm starving." Right next to her at the bar was none other than Phil Coulson himself.

"It was a very boring party," Phil said simply when he was thrown a few looks that were basically asking why he hadn't mentioned being there before.

"Miss Stark?" he asked causing Toni to turn to him giving him a smile and a quick, "yeah?!"

"Agent Coulson," Phil informed her as Toni realised that she recognised the name she seemed to run it through her memory before she placed it, "oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the guy from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."

"I'm impressed that you remembered that after only a passing mention of it from Piper," Clint said knowing that even he had fumbled over the exact name a few times before getting it right.

"I have mentioned several times now that my memory rocks," Toni said with a shrug, "well it really does. And I'd never heard of them before apart from on a few papers that I briefly glimpsed over the years before they were hidden away in filing cabinets or shredded. So I was curious."

"And it was after this meeting that you decided to hack into our systems and get that redirect sorted out," Natasha said, "although I guess they aren't really our systems for much longer as we're quitting so I should probably stop calling them that now. SHIELD's systems then."

"Yeah," Toni said slightly amused at Natasha's last comment, "this is the meeting that made me certain I needed to know more about an organisation that wanted to interrogate me on how I got out of Afghanistan. Especially since the name included the word 'Homeland,' coupled with the word 'Enforcement,' which made me think it was a side branch of the army only it turned out to be much more than that."

"I'm impressed that you remembered," Phil said pleased.

"You really do need a new name for that though," Toni said with a more genuine smile this time as she took a sip of her Scotch. She appeared to have deduced that Phil was the kind of guy who would be more receptive to her real personality and that he had the kind of personality that she wouldn't mind being like that with.

"Should have known that you two clicked instantly," Natasha said rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, I hear that a lot," Phil quipped, "We're still working on it."

"I still cannot believe how long it took you," Toni laughed, "I figured out the acronym the minute I heard it. If it took you much longer I might even have told you just to call yourselves SHIELD."

A/n: Toni's dress is on my profile but the heels I imagine her with don't actually exist so just make up your own pair that match the dress :) The next half of the party should be in the next chapter and then it's angry Toni time as she blows shit up :) WHOO! Love y'all