Chapter 49 – Military Trouble

A/N – The good news is that we broke 550 reviews and one reviewer has a chance to be number 600 and choose a oneshot. Still waiting on XxXSilverShadowXxX telling me what they want. I'm setting a time limit so that the oneshot will default to reviewer 501 if I don't get your answer by Sunday's chapter unless I am given a good reason for it.

ReadPaxJoy: I'm glad you think that this story has everything :) And I prioritise this above my own homework :D You're welcome and I'm glad you liked it. I'm afraid some scenes have to be sad :(

youwannabekate: I just can't bring myself to like Rhodey but I'm keeping him pretty canon so you should still like him. There will be an edit to his character in Iron Man 2 which means that I can be comfortable writing him so I hope you don't mind it.

nessa11997: Glad you liked it :)

XxxBellaBellaxxX: I'm glad you liked it :D Enjoy the scene

ladynarutochan: Thank you for the well wishes :) Glad you liked it

LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: Coincidentally I am also sitting in a swivel chair laughing at them because it's just a bit oh dear :D Enjoy

ReenReen: I'm just unique like that :D And yes I do have a life I just write from about midnight to about 5am when I can't sleep due to my insomnia. My life is actually quite busy I have to fit swimming, dancing, acting, three different singing classes, basketball, debate club, school newspaper & school into my schedule so I'm sometimes surprised I get out any chapters :D And you'll just have to read and see.

Post U Later: Well no, she really doesn't because Toni doesn't really trust her that much although she eventually will by the time this series ends. She's probably about equal with Rhodey in this story overall.

Maeleana: Thank you

FallenQueen2: Hey new reviewer! I am really glad that you like this story and I'm glad that you're looking forward to something from this story.

"Surely Colonel Rhodes will try other channels and try and make contact before he goes in for the full throttle attack plan," Steve said using Rhodey's full title despite being told when they first met that he should call him either James or Rhodey as Toni had taken to calling him back at MIT. He had been planning on doing so but then Colonel Rhodes had gotten angry with him when he had let slip one of the things that had said to her on the helicarrier. He still remembered the dressing down the colonel had given him and some of the things that he had said which had really hit Steve where it hurt. Mind you Toni had seemed a little more angry with Colonel Rhodes than she had been with Steve at the time although Steve couldn't understand why that had been the case.

"Well Rhodey does have at least some sense so yes," Toni said knowing that the first thing he had done was probably talk to her about it because he did know her at least a little no matter what the others thought on the matter. Although she supposed it was a reasonable thought upon seeing some of his reactions to some of her earlier actions. The problem with that conclusion was that she was a pretty unpredictable person but especially when it was to do with things she had never experienced before like the length of time she had been in captivity and of course the installation of the arc reactor (she had never told anyone about being hooked up to a car battery first because she didn't want to see the pity in their eyes when they looked at her. It was bad enough that she got pity from some of the other things that had happened to her that she had to tell Phil, Rhodey or Piper.) Hence he couldn't really predict a typical reaction for Toni in that situation and so he went with what the default for anybody else would be if they had gone through the same thing. The real mistake in his judgement had been going for the reaction of a normal person whereas he should have known to assume the opposite but it wasn't entirely Rhodey's fault. It was Toni's for being so unpredictable in the first place.

Of course Toni's actions were quite predictable if you spent enough time around her where you weren't trying to pressure her into doing something which was why in reality the others were so angry with Toni's so-called friends for their lack of knowledge of the actions Toni would to them obviously do after certain events. That didn't mean that she was incapable of shocking them for they knew that Toni was Toni and that was her thing.

Up in the sky Toni was oblivious to the discussion that was going on below and JARVIS didn't seem to have informed her that it was a no fly zone. She simply put more power into her repulsors and blasted her way across the sky.

"Why didn't JARVIS tell you that you were flying through a restricted air zone?" Natasha asked. JARVIS seemed to keep Toni informed of everything nowadays and surely things like that would automatically be on the list.

"I told you before JARVIS has a backdoor into all of the security systems of the world but that privilege is too easy to abuse," Toni explained, "even for me so I've forbidden him to relay anything not directly related to me to my systems in case I get too tempted by the knowledge that is there. Obviously before that moment there had never been an occasion where I had to get information on what parts of the sky weren't places you could just fly through. He gives me all of that information now because it became relevant."

"That's probably a good idea," Clint said and upon receiving a glare from Bruce realised that could be interpreted as if he was saying that he believed that Toni would be corrupted if she had all that knowledge, "I'm just saying that while Toni is strong in the face of that much information anyone would be curious. Even me and that's not supposed to be part of my job. I only find out the things that I absolutely need to know."

As Rhodey walked into the control room the man in charge told him, "we ran an ID check and cross-referenced with all known databases. We have nothing."

"Any high altitude surveillance in the region?" Rhodey asked wanting to get a view on it before he made any decisions.

Toni smiled a little. Alright so the suit wouldn't be caught on that surveillance but at least it was a logical leap to make rather than going straight for the guns. It seemed that she had taught him something after all. Well there was a reason that he was her liaison for the military other than the fact that they had met in college. They had lost touch when Toni went underground and she hadn't even known he had gone military so obviously that was out. It was because he actually had some brains and also because he understood that diving right in was not the best solution 99% of the time.

"We got an AWAC and a Global Hawk in the area," one soldier informed him relaying information from the screen in front of him.

"So this thing just appeared out of nowhere?" Rhodey queried clearly wondering how anything could do that, "how come it didn't show up on the radar?"

"Because I am that good," Toni said with a laugh but nobody laughed with her because they were far too concerned about what could happen if Rhodey admitted that they couldn't get anything on the suit and sent out missiles after her because that is what they were sure to do. That or they would send in planes loaded with an arsenal and that would end up with the same result of Toni being fired on. Of course they had seen that Toni wasn't easily taken out by missiles having been able to get back up almost immediately after colliding with the ground but a plane would be able to land multiple hits at once and that might be enough to take Toni down. Of course it wouldn't kill her. She was sitting right there and they weren't that caught up in the movie that they completely forgot about that fact but still. It wasn't the easiest thing to sit through in the world.

"Got a minimal radar cross-section, sir," the soldier monitoring the radar station informed him.

"Is it stealth?" Rhodey asked obviously wondering if this was some sort of secret operation by an organisation he hadn't heard of so that he would be ill advised to shoot it out of the sky without further intel.

"No, sir, it's tiny," the same man replied puzzled.

"Lady Toni is not that tiny," Thor said confused, "the suit makes her much bigger as well."

"They were speaking relatively Thor," Toni informed him, "you've mainly been exposed to my technology whilst you've been on Midgard. That or SHIELD's but basically the one man jets that SHIELD uses are small for jets which means that the suit is considered miniscule."

"We think it's an unmanned aerial vehicle," he said going for the obvious conclusion.

"The military aren't being very accurate with their assumptions in this film," Natasha observed.

"To be fair to them everything they're seeing is new," Steve pointed out, "going for the obvious conclusion instead of making up wild and terrifying new situations that would just make an unknown situation worse would not be the rational way to go about it. Go for what you know first and then make new hypotheses."

"I guess we're rubbing off on you Steve," Bruce said with a smile, "you sounded a bit like me and Toni for a minute there."

"Colonel, what are we dealing with here?" the boss asked seriously giving Rhodey a look as if he was saying that he didn't believe that Rhodey had no idea what was going on.

"Everyone's always suspicious of Rhodey because apparently being friends with me means he has split loyalties because the military and I parted ways," Toni said rolling her eyes, "yet when I was developing weaponry his supervisors were all for it because they wanted someone close to me and Rhodey was the only person I would agree to allow near me. They're such hypocrites and people wonder why I want to punch many of them in the face whenever I see them talking about things as if they're so superior."

Rhodey considered the situation for a moment and then told him, "Let me make a call."

"And here comes the inevitable call to Toni," Bruce said knowing that Rhodey had now worked out that something that small moving fast enough that they couldn't get a close view on was probably something that the billionaire had invented. The other man appeared to be many things but he certainly didn't seem to be stupid.

"Sargent, clear a hole," the boss agreed getting Rhodey patched into the communications network from his mobile as he picked it up. Sure enough the suit was soon shown as the phone network connected to it began to signal an incoming call.

"Hello?" Toni asked nonchalantly.

"You knew it was Rhodey," Clint said knowingly, "and yet you still answered it as if you didn't know who it was?"

"Well caller ID comes in very handy these days," Toni said rolling her eyes, "But I'm always far too busy to check it and it would have looked suspicious if I knew who it was. Anyway I answer the phone like that anyway when I actually pick up my phone."

Toni was notorious for not picking up her phone when she got absorbed in her work as the Avengers had often found out when unable to get down to her personal labs to drag her into an event Steve had arranged for them to do together they had tried to call her. She either didn't hear it over the blaring music she was always playing in the lab which meant she didn't hear JARVIS either or she got so absorbed in a project that she was deaf to anything that wasn't JARVIS telling her if something could be fabricated or not.

"Toni?" Rhodey questioned even though that was who he had called and it was her voice on the other end of the line.

"Who's this?" Toni asked pretending to be back in her lab where she never checked her caller ID.

"It's Rhodes," Rhodey informed her using his proper surname rather than the nickname she had given him to indicate that the situation was serious and she shouldn't be joking around.

"Well maybe you know each other better than I thought," Natasha said after considering the exchange for a moment, "that conversation sounds like it's really simple but there was about a million lines of subtext exchanged as well."

A/n: I know I didn't get much further into the scene and I truly intended to get further and I would have except for something triggered something for me and I spent an hour I could have spent writing this crying so I'm sorry for the lack of progression but it will be in next chapter.