Chapter 50 – Ready, Fire, Aim

A/N – I actually can't believe that we've made it to Chapter 50 :) I have never written a story this long including ones I haven't published anywhere. I especially can't believe it since I have had a torn ligament in my writing wrist since December and I've written all of these chapters one handed. Little random fact for you there :)

youwannabekate: I'm not good at taking time :D I'm a chronic overachiever it just doesn't compute :) I'm glad that you liked it and yeah that thing happened on the 6th/7th of December so it has been a while and I guess I feel a little better today.

nessa11997: You're welcome :)

Booklover2526: Glad you liked the chapter and thank you for what you said even if it doesn't really apply in this case :)

ladynarutochan: Thanks for the cuddle :) Have one back ~#cuddles#~ I'm glad you liked it and it totally doesn't have to be constructive /lol

babyliss12: I highly doubt that genius is an accurate word but thank you anyway :D Glad that you liked the chapter :D

LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: They do because Toni has sort of forgiven him for reasons that will become clear later on :)

AvengersReviewer: This reply may get long :D Thank you for the compliments on my characterisation as that's the thing that I worry about the most so I'm glad you think it's good. I am really glad that you liked the interpretation of Iron Man and that you understood it would have been OOC to keep that scene the same. And yeah the key word doesn't appear to be intelligence in their minds. I have ideas for those scenes although nothing is absolutely definite yet. Thank you for the recommendation and I will definitely check it out because I am literally transcribing straight from the movies at the moment :D I'm keeping careful note of everything I have planned for the sequel so I'll hopefully be able to include everything.

Harm Marie: I'm glad :)

Post U Later: She does sort of but not completely. At least that's the way I've always been attempting to write the character. And yes she does :)

moonyrocks13: I'm glad you like this story :)

"He has known me since I was fifteen," Toni pointed out, "and during that time he wasn't doing his best to avoid me at all times like everyone that I knew before that was. So yes we can say a lot more silently than we would be able to say out loud in that situation seeing as if he implicated me in any way then the military would have sent people to take me down to my Malibu house and they would have completely ruined all of my furniture."

"You care more about your furniture than about being shot or being arrested," Bruce said sceptically not quite able to understand how anyone – even Toni – could think about their furniture when their life was more important.

"The furniture in that house cost a lot of money," Toni said defensively, "besides I would still have been in the suit and yes I would have lost a great house but I would have gotten out of the situation alive. And eventually my influence would have convinced the army to see my motivations for what they were. Saving the people that the army couldn't and getting rid of the weapons that were allowing them to hurt those same people. I have plenty of houses to hide in if I ever need to avoid my two main ones."

"That plan is alarmingly well laid out," Phil said worriedly.

"I've been worried about how the military will react to some of the things I do ever since I parted ways with them and basically said they were doing a bad job on national television," Toni admitted, "I have to have at least twelve back-up plans for something that serious. That was number 1 to be enacted if I've just come back to an ambush."

Steve paled a little on hearing that Toni had a good reason to be afraid of military intervention because of her actions as Iron Man. That wasn't something that he could condone the army doing without getting all the facts. Maybe blind trust when they were concerned wasn't working in his favour once more. It had failed him with Fury and SHIELD as all the time they had been preaching about stopping the war Loki wanted to bring on the world they had been plotting on activating Stage 2 and destroying alien civilizations that hadn't done anything to them as a deterrent. Okay so that was pure speculation but the more of these films that Steve saw and the more he found out about SHIELD's actions the more he believed that while Fury didn't condone attacks on innocent civilians he wouldn't have the same qualms about destroying foreign creatures who could 'easily become a threat.' After all wasn't that what the military wanted to do to the Hulk.

"Sorry, hello?" Toni said probably genuinely not able to hear Rhodey that time because the wind around her was beginning to make an awful racket as she cut through it at high speed.

"You must have cut out that noise somehow because you were travelling just as fast in our battle against Loki and I didn't hear any wind noise when we were watching the movie portraying that," Clint realised.

"Kind of," Toni told him, "I managed to exclude more of the background noise and if the wind isn't moving too quickly then yes I don't hear anything but if the wind is blowing fiercely already and then I add to it because of the speed of the suit then it can still sometimes interfere with my comms. Thankfully it would pretty much have to be gale force at this stage for me to lose contact and I shouldn't fly in gale force even with the suit because it's size is a disadvantage there because no matter how much power I give the suit, nature is always going to have more."

"I said it's Rhodes," Rhodey repeated.

"Speak up, please," Toni said politely knowing that if he didn't she was going to miss a lot of what he was about to say and if she got a reaction wrong then Rhodey might give up on her or end up giving the order to capture her because his first loyalty was to the military.

"I think that's one of the politest things I've ever heard you say," Natasha quipped and technically it was true. Toni wasn't exactly rude unless she had taken against you. It was more like she wasn't afraid to say things that were true but others would never admit to thinking. She wasn't afraid of people's reactions because everybody vilified her and hero worshipped her on and off and she was used to the mood swings of the general public. She didn't think she'd ever seen a tabloid about Toni that was even a quarter of the way to being accurate and that included the 'nice' ones purely because they didn't even begin to sum up all the good that Toni had done for the world. And none of them mentioned the good that Toni had done by giving up on making weapons because at the time they had vilified her for it and by the time she was making arc reactors it was old news and they would rather report on the work she was doing in clean energy or how she had stabilised a war zone with the Iron Man suit. In between the times in the same tabloids when Toni was irresponsible for not handing over said suit to the military so it could be replicated and used to kill more people. And some of them would probably have been completely innocent and just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet the soldiers who made the shots would have been considered heroes as Toni was victimised in the press for not tagging along and helping.

"What in the hell is that noise?" Rhodey inquired puzzled.

"That's another reason that stopping the wind from interfering with your communications was indeed an excellent idea for people get suspicious of your movements," Thor stated which Toni thought was a rather lengthy way of saying that it was a good idea that she stopped interference with her calls when people not in the know called especially since everyone knew her identity nowadays. She really needed to have a conversation with Thor about slang. Or she could just get one of the others to do it as she wasn't sure she would have enough time to commit to a task like that. Well time that wasn't when Thor would be in bed sleeping anyway as most of her free time where she worked on her own innovations was in the early hours of the morning.

"Oh, yeah," Toni said smoothly, "I'm driving with the top down."

Here Thor noticed a startling similarity to his brother again because that lie had just rolled off of Toni's tongue and she didn't even appear to have had to think about her reply before she said it. Loki would often do similar things to get the brothers out of trouble with Odin and Frigga when they were younger and then of course he eventually started doing it to cover up his many crimes.

"Yeah, well, I need your help right now," Rhodey told her.

"It's funny how that works, huh?" Toni said letting all the resentment that she had felt over Rhodey snubbing her because of 'mental health issues' leak through into her voice so he would know that she was still very angry with him about it.

"He does have a lot of guts to ask for your help with anything after flat out refusing to help you," Phil said directing a look of disapproval at the frozen image of Rhodey on the screen. He would be sure to give it in person to the man himself when they next saw him. Of course Phil had not been happy when he found out about Rhodey's theft of the Iron Man Mark II suit and he hadn't been able to glare at Rhodey for that either having been indisposed during the times when the other Avengers would have met with him.

"Yeah," Rhodey said ignoring her tone as if not wanting to admit that he messed up, "Speaking of funny, we've got a weapons depot that was just blown up a few clicks from where you were being held captive."

"They should be grateful," Clint muttered even though he understood the military's motivations. It didn't mean that he necessarily had to agree with everything they did and right now he certainly did not agree with them. Yes they had to determine who did it but they were done a favour and they should be looking for the person who had saved them a whole lot of trouble.

"Well, that's a hot spot," Toni said simply stating the truth. It was useful that when she would eventually have to lie about what was going on in Afghanistan that she had cold hard facts to back up her tales.

Thor once again recognised a tactic of Loki's and to be perfectly honest it was beginning to make him uncomfortable. Not because that was a detriment to Toni's personality because if Loki had chosen the right path he could have done great things with his talent and Toni appeared to have chosen a different fork at a similar point in her life. Instead of taking out any bitterness on ordinary people and trying to kill them she had devoted her life to saving them. What scared him was that if anyone really truly hurt Toni and destroyed what she had then she could veer away from them and it would be all their fault. So Thor vowed to himself that he would do anything he could to protect Toni because he would be damned to Hel before he let Loki's fate be the fate of another person that he considered a sibling to him.

"Sounds like someone stepped in and did your job for you, huh?" Toni said attempting to point out that somebody had stepped in to help and not to harm in hopes of warding off any attacks on the suit which was already slightly damaged from the hits it had taken already.

"Good strategy," Steve complimented knowing that preventing an attack on you was much better than ending up having to avoid one.

"Why do you sound out of breath, Toni?" Rhodey queried beginning to catch on that something wasn't quite right about Toni's story but her reply was as smooth as ever, "I just got back from jogging in the canyon and I'm driving back to the mansion. I decided that jogging there and back as well wasn't a good idea after being injured so recently as I might end up doing myself further injury."

"That was a good story," Natasha said with a smile. Toni always could spin a tale and it was something that Natasha really admired about her because it meant that Toni would have made a good spy. Not that Natasha would wish her life on Toni because she had already been through enough. More than even Natasha had ever thought and her mind had conjured up some pretty twisted things that could have happened. At least the worst ones hadn't come true.

Rhodey seemed to believe Toni's story but he double checked, "you sure you don't have any tech in that area I should know about?"

"Nope," Toni said simply knowing that if she said yes and got Rhodey to definitely call off a strike then he would definitely get her into a lot of trouble with the military.

"Bogey spotted!" another soldier shouted and instantly another was on the radio to their high altitude surveillance planes, "Whiplash, come in hot."

Everyone in the room tensed up when they heard that the military had managed to get a sufficient view on Toni that they were confident of her position. This was probably not going to end well for any party involved because Toni was never going to get taken down without going down fighting.

"Okay, good," Rhodey deadpanned hoping that if Toni was lying this would shock her enough that she would lose her silver tongue, "cause I'm staring at one right now, and it's about to be blown to kingdom come."

The room exploded with insults directed at the military. Although maybe exploded wasn't the right term for most of the insults were whispered darkly or said so lowly that you could almost imagine that they weren't being said at all. It wasn't hard to imagine that the soldiers who were behind the strike would sense the malevolent thoughts that were being directed their way and were shivering as if someone had walked over their grave. The one comment that echoed above all the others was one from Natasha, "so much for this movie having no more 'ready, fire, aim!'"

A/n – Still can't believe that I just finished writing Chapter 50 of this story. Hope you all enjoy it and the chase had better conclude next chapter or I will be angry with myself :D And it's been less than 90 days since Chapter 1 so I now have a doc manager window filled with updates for this story /lol