Chapter 75 – Happy Birthday Miss Stark

A/n – I'm sorry that my weekly updates have become biweekly. Something always seems to come up. I will endeavour not to let it happen next week.

Ro781727 – Ah, yes! The myriad adventures of Natasha and Toni. I'm looking forward to having them tell some tales in the next break. Yeah, it's not my favourite part of the movie.

Noventia – You're obviously purposefully trying to make me cry by being so sweet. Thank you very much for the compliment.

"I'm not entirely sure I can watch this," Toni sighed, "if I suddenly run out of the room please do NOT come and get me. I will have a very good reason for it."

"You won't mind if I join you will you," Natasha muttered, "this has been bad enough already. It's not like I need to know what happened considering I was there."

"No, you're welcome to join me," Toni told her, "Talking to you might help me stop thinking about it."

"So unfair," Clint said, "how come we don't get to run away from the embarrassing sections?"

"One, you don't know what happened while we do so if you don't want to get completely lost then you have to watch the whole thing," Toni sighed, "and two, if we all stopped to have a break any time something embarrassing or dangerous happened we would never finish these damn movies. If there's a movie about you on this disk I give you full permission to run away during the embarrassing parts."

Clint huffed a little but couldn't deny that Toni did have a point. Although despite the offer he was really hoping that there wasn't a movie about his life. He'd done far too many stupid things for the other Avengers to laugh at. He knew he was a hypocrite for not wanting to be laughed at when he had been laughing at Toni this entire time but he couldn't help it. That was yet another reason to pray he did not have a movie. Toni would be sure to get payback on him for all of his comments and some of the things she would come up with were sure to be incredibly scathing. He supposed everyone else was thinking the same thing. Despite Amora's apparent fixation on showing events in Toni's life it didn't sound like there was much left worth showing after this. And there were still two movies left.

Steve was not looking forward to this section of the movie at all. If Toni was embarrassed about it then it was going to be very bad. Toni was never embarrassed by anything she had done. Well at least not anything after Afghanistan anyway. And she always had an explanation for why it was the only option at the time. Maybe once upon a time he would have been pleased to see Toni embarrass herself but he had to admit that now he was just concerned.

The screen changed to show the party in full swing and Toni in full Iron Man regalia with the faceplate up spinning the records at the DJ booth.

"Yeah, definitely not," Toni sighed, "just tell JARVIS if you need me to clarify something for you because I am so out of here."

"Yep, I am definitely joining you," Natasha sighed.

"JARVIS make sure there are lots of drinks and a decent amount of comfort food in the nearest sitting room," Toni sighed, "Tasha and I will definitely need it."

"Of course, ma'am," JARVIS replied.

Before anyone else in the room could protest Toni and Natasha had linked arms and headed into the elevator. JARVIS took them down one floor to a display of food and alcohol that had the pair heading straight for the table. It had been a long time since they'd had a girls' night even if it was under slightly strange circumstances.

Bruce sighed and said, "as much as I wish I could join them we should probably start the movie again if we ever want to see them again. Let's hope we can get through it before they get totally smashed."

"That will probably be accomplished," Thor said, "both Lady Toni and Lady Natasha can truly hold their alcohol."

"Yeah but putting the two of them together with any amount of alcohol is still bound to lead to disaster," Steve pointed out.

"I acknowledge your point Friend Steven," Thor said.

The crowd was cheering obviously thrilled that Toni was doing something interesting at the party. When Piper walked in however he did not look at all happy with what was going on.

"Now that expression looks familiar," Bruce snorted.

"Aye, it is the one on Mr Potts face whenever he looks at an Avenger who isn't Lady Toni or Lady Natasha," Thor confirmed.

"I still don't get what his problem is," Clint scoffed.

Toni danced around and fist bumped the actual DJ who had to shake his hand about with a grimace afterwards. It obviously wasn't comfortable to fist bump the suit. The people in the crowd waved about bottles of champagne and cheered.

"I've got to say," Steve said, "I always pictured Toni's parties as being crazier than this. I mean I know she's probably about to do something even more ridiculous than wearing the suit at a party but really this seems pretty tame."

"It's pretty tame for a party thrown by Toni," Phil admitted, "I've walked in on a few of the others while trying to track her down for a variety of reasons. Although I don't think she really enjoys them all that much. Except the one time she managed to get AC/DC to come and play at the party."

"I bet she was freaking ecstatic when she managed that one," Bruce said with a fond smile. Toni's love of AC/DC was known by practically everyone who'd heard of Toni Stark. It might as well be her theme music. Although he supposed it did give AC/DC quite a bit of free advertising when a famous person insisted on playing their music everywhere she went. They were probably quite happy to perform for her after all that free publicity.

The scene changed to outside as a parade of valets rushed about trying to greet every car as it drove up. Rhodey could be seen waiting in line while talking on the phone, "Yes, sir, I understand. No. No, sir, that will not be necessary. I'll handle it."

"That does not sound good," Clint sighed.

"And here we go," Phil said, "this is the start of the disaster. Well, mostly."

"Yes, I think Toni putting the suit on was really the start of it," Steve said exasperatedly.

"Sir, I personally guarantee that within 24 hours, Iron Man will be back on watch," Rhodey insisted.

"Yep, definitely bad," Clint gulped.

"Toni would not have taken someone taking Rhodey's job well," Bruce said, "I'd hate to see the state of the military if that had happened. Although since they don't have contracts with Stark Industries anymore they don't really need a liaison."

"No, they need a spy," Phil said under his breath to make sure the others didn't hear, "and Rhodey was a little too invested for their tastes so they drove a wedge between them. It was rather well done for a military operation."

When Rhodey entered the party he took a look around before spotting Piper and heading over to him. "Hey, Piper," he called.

"I'm… I'm going to get some air," Piper said panicked.

"He really does manage to work himself up into a frenzy over these things," Bruce mused, "you'd think after all those years working with Toni he'd be used to her doing stuff like this by now."

"I don't think it's actually possible to get used to Toni Stark," Steve said, "look at all the new things we've learned by watching these that we never would have guessed had happened."

"He has a point," Thor said.

"What's wrong?" Rhodey said concerned.

Piper rounded the corner with Rhodey following him to reveal Toni still dancing about on stage, "I don't know what to do," he lamented.

"You gotta be kidding me," Rhodey sighed.

"Now that's the tone of a long suffering friend," Clint snorted, "Natasha sounds like that all the time."

"Only when she's around you," the others chorused causing Clint to pout but he did know that he had walked into that one.

The people whooped as Toni stumbled off the stage with a bottle of alcohol in hand.

"I thought she said that she wasn't really drunk," Steve said puzzled.

"And what better way to make it appear as though she is than to act like it," Phil pointed out, "nobody's going to buy that this was all caused by excess alcohol if she doesn't make it look convincing."

The crowd looked worried for a second but Toni quickly stood up again and signalled that she was okay and the cheering started once more.

"That's it," Rhodey sighed, "I'm making…"

"No, no, no," Piper said grabbing hold of his arm, "Don't call anyone."

"Well, at least he cares that much," Clint sighed, "he looks like he might be finally realising that something is actually wrong rather than this just being the normal Toni antics. I hope that's the case because I don't know how to deal with the stress of knowing that nobody but Natasha knows about the poisoning and that she can't help yet."

"Piper. This is ridiculous," Rhodey declared pointing at Toni angrily, "I just stuck my neck out for this woman."

"I know," Piper insisted repeatedly, "I get it. I'm gonna handle it, okay? Just let me handle it."

"I think I know what she's doing and I think I know how it went wrong," Bruce sighed, "oh this was a bad plan." Albeit Toni hadn't known that Rhodey would be sticking his neck out for her right before he arrived and hence would be more irritated about her pulling a crazy stunt resulting in him taking drastic action. But honestly couldn't this have waited just a little bit more.

"Handle it," Rhodey told her firmly, "Or I'm gonna have to."

"Oh," Steve said recalling that Rhodey had a set of Iron Man armour. He'd seen it on occasion when it was brought it for repairs and he remembered thinking that it had a lot more weapons on it than Toni's standard ones. He guessed that was about to be explained.

Toni was standing on stage with a microphone speaking to the crowd, "you know, the question I get asked most often is 'Toni, how do you go to the bathroom in the suit?'," she paused to make a face before exclaiming, "just like that!"

The crowd quickly cracked up laughing as Piper took the microphone from Toni.

"Toni has a shit sense of humour," Clint snorted.

"If she's like this when she's pretending to be drunk then I do not want to see her when he's actually drunk," Steve sighed.

"It's a fairly rare sight considering how much alcohol it takes to drop her," Phil said, "besides it all depends what mood she's in before she gets drunk."

"I sense a story behind that one," Clint said excitedly.

"Yes, there is but there is no way I'm telling you," Phil said blushing slightly. Not only would Toni kill him for mentioning it but he didn't exactly come off in the best way in that story anyway. He was quite happy for that one to remain between the two of them.

"Does this girl know how to throw a party or what?" Piper improvised to wild cheers from the guests, "Unbelievable! Thank you so much. Toni, we all thank you so much for such a wonderful night. And we're gonna say goodnight now and thank you all for coming."

This was greeted by a large amount of groans from the people in the crowd.

"Understandable considering some of them were only just arriving a few minutes ago," Bruce admitted, "and that from what I know of Toni her parties tend to go on for hours."

"No, no, no," Toni insisted, "we didn't have the cake. We didn't blow out the candles."

"There were probably better ways of going about getting Toni out of the suit than trying to cancel the party midway through," Steve admitted, "just saying she had to go get changed to cut the cake would have worked."

"To be fair he was improvising," Phil said.

"You're out of control okay?" Piper whispered to Toni, "Trust me on this one, okay?"

"You're out of control, handsome," Toni slurred.

"I was wondering when there would be actual flirting instead of just banter," Clint said, "Hopefully there won't be too much though."

"Agreed," the others chorused. None of them had been all that fond of that relationship. Piper wanted to change too much about Toni for it to really work out in the end. Still, if they hadn't tried there would always have been a what if surrounding that relationship.

"It's time to go to bed," Piper told her, "It's time."

"Give me another smooch," Toni teased.

"You're not going to be happy about this," Piper said trying to push her away although he looked somewhat reluctant.

"Really, do we have to watch this bit," Clint said covering his eyes, "There is no point to this other than romance."

"Come on, you know you want to," Toni told him.

"I think she's going for a 'just one time before I die' kiss at this point," Bruce sighed, "just to see what it was like."

Toni tried a couple more times before Piper managed to firmly push her off and say, "Just send everybody home, okay? It's time to…"

"If you say so," Toni sighed.

"Okay," Piper said grabbing the champagne bottle and handing Toni back the microphone, "I'll take this. You take that."

"This is not going to end as well as Piper thinks it will," Steve sighed.

"Piper Potts," Toni declared to a few muted cheers from the crowd, "He's right. The party's over. Then again, the party was over for me, like, an hour and a half ago. The after-party starts in 15 minutes!"

"There we go," Bruce sighed.

There was a lot of cheering from the crowd as Piper sighed clearly acknowledging that he had failed. "And if anybody," Toni said, "Piper, doesn't like it, there's the door."

"I've got to admit while ill advised that was very smooth," Phil said.

"That should be added to our list of sentences to describe Lady Toni," Thor acknowledged.

A repulsor blast went off with that last gesture smashing through some of the glass to reveal the fountain behind it.

"I'm not sure I can watch," Steve said quietly, "I so understand why Natasha and Toni chose to have fun downstairs instead of experiencing this."

The crowd began jumping up and down and screaming once more as Toni played to the crowd. Piper shot a despairing look at Rhodey who watched as one of the women in the crowd tossed up a champagne bottle for Toni to explode.

"Well, we know her friends are just as crazy as her at least," Bruce sighed, "so we can find her some new ones."

Rhodey quickly left as Toni continued to blast bottles.

"Seriously they're cheering when there is glass falling from the sky," Phil said, "some of them are wearing bikini tops. They must be seriously drunk."

"Either that or they're just insane," Steve added.

Rhodey let himself into the lab and looked over at the old Iron Man suits. He headed up to the assembly area and got himself suited up in the Mark 2.

"Bugger, I see what you guys were on about now," Clint exclaimed, "this was such a terrible idea."

"If I didn't already know that Toni had planned it this way then I would now," Bruce said, "Those suits are bio locked and there's absolutely no way he'd be able to get in one if she hadn't let him."

The people in the crowd seemed to be retrieving anything now. A bouncing drunk woman returned with a watermelon which Toni blasted with her chest plate.

"To be honest as dangerous as it is this game looks kind of fun," Clint said with a smirk, "and because Natasha's not here she can't even punish me."

"I'll punish you later," Natasha's voice came over the intercom, "we can hear your comments from down here because JARVIS is sending them."

"That means I heard you call my sense of humour shit Barton," Toni shouted.

"I am so dead," Clint muttered, "should have fucking called that one."

"I'm only going to say this once," Rhodey shouted over the cheering as the crowd split to show him in the Mark 2 suit, "Get out!"

The faceplate on the suit lowered as the guests began to flee the building.

"Well, that was a bit rude," Phil said, "although understandable considering nobody wants drunk people caught in the crossfire."

"You don't deserve to wear one of these," Rhodey told Toni, "Shut it down."

"No, he really is going to be a dick about this isn't he," Bruce scoffed, "getting Toni to stop is something he has to do but telling the person who created the suits that she didn't deserve one and he did - despite him only having one because of her - that's a dick move.

"That's what I bloody told him," Toni shouted over the intercom.

"Goldstein," Toni said turning around.

"Yes, Miss Stark," the DJ said emerging from where he'd hidden behind his booth.

"Give me a phat beat to beat my buddy's ass to," Toni snarled.

"And that's Toni saying that while she does not appreciate said dick move," Clint chimed in, "because otherwise she would not have made this a real battle."

The DJ quickly began playing 'Another One Bites the Dust' as Rhodey launched up behind Toni and grabbed her. "I told you to shut it down," he said.

Toni simply lowered her faceplate and blasted them off sending them both flying backwards through the wall and then the door of the sauna.

"There's a fucking sauna in that house," Clint exclaimed.

"There's one here too," Toni told him, "I'd have told you about it if you'd asked."

"You are ridiculous you know that," Clint sighed, "and yes please tell me where it is the next time we have a break. I have a feeling that I might need it after this day."

Toni landed directly on her feet by the boxing ring while Rhodey rolled across the ground obviously not as skilled at piloting the suit.

"I doubt JARVIS was helping him so Toni has an advantage," Steve said.

"You are correct Mr Rogers," JARVIS chimed in, "I was not assisting Colonel Rhodes at this time."

Toni strolled away saying, "Now, put that thing back where you found it before someone gets hurt."

Rhodey simply started hurling weights at Toni's head to try and win back an advantage. "Really?" Toni said when one of them crashed through yet another window.

"I cannot imagine how much the repairs to the house cost," Bruce said, "I'm guessing it's a figure that I don't even want to think about."

Toni lifted up a set of weights by the bar and shook one of the weights of the end so she could use it as a weapon. The strength of the blow sent Rhodey flying through the boxing arena and crashing into a wall.

"Ouch," Phil deadpanned. He didn't really feel all that sorry for Colonel Rhodes at the moment though.

"Sorry, pal," Toni said as she flew over to hover above him, "but Iron Man doesn't have a sidekick."

Rhodey picked up one of the poles from the boxing ring and began hitting Toni with it shouting, "sidekick this!"

"It's funny because he's basically functioning as Toni's sidekick nowadays," Clint said with a smirk.

Rhodey managed to get Toni down on one knee and then used his leverage to push her up through the ceiling. "Had enough," Rhodey asked as she followed Toni through the hole.

"This fight is going to last forever," Steve said, "if they continue on like this that is."

"Natalie!" Piper cried out as he ran through the lobby.

"Mr Potts," Natasha said as she made her way over now dressed in a cheetah print dress.

"Don't you 'Mr. Potts' me! I'm on to you," Piper raged, "You know what? Ever since you came here…"

"That was a scarily accurate guess for entirely the wrong reasons," Thor said, "Lady Natasha almost looked worried for a second."

He was cut off as Rhodey and Toni came flying through the ceiling and crashed nearby as Piper screamed. Happy came running back into the house as Toni called out, "Piper!" to try and get him to move out of the way.

"And now there are people about," Steve sighed, "this is getting worse and worse."

Happy quickly grabbed Piper and pulled him out of the house knowing there was nothing else he could do. Natasha quickly headed off down a corridor as Toni smacked Rhodey onto the ground, "You want it! TAKE IT!" she shouted.

"Now that's a rare phenomenon," Bruce whistled, "Toni's actually mad enough to stop with the quips and go straight to shouting."

They started brawling with fists instead of weaponry now punching each other out while the crowd outside oh'd and ah'd. It briefly ended with Toni smashing Rhodey through a table as the people outside took pictures. Then she shouted and the crowd fled screaming.

"Okay, they saw two people beating the shit out of each other and that's what scared them," Phil scoffed, "they were enjoying the fight but one growl and it's bye-bye."

Rhodey pried the top of the damaged table off and used to smack Toni round the head while she was distracted. Toni went flying into the fireplace sending sparks flying everywhere. Once Toni pulled herself out she lifted her hand as Rhodey did the same. "Put your hand down," Rhodey said now sounding slightly regretful for all the chaos.

"Toni had the right idea about the drinks," Clint sighed, "it must suck to be you Steve because the alcohol would do nothing to block this out for you."

"You think you got what it takes to wear that suit?" Toni deadpanned in a dark tone.

"We don't have to do this Toni," Rhodey said pleadingly.

"You wanna be the War Machine, take you shot," Toni goaded.

"Really, that's how he chose the name," Phil laughed, "I bet the military is thrilled that their project is named after something Toni Stark happened to say."

"Put it down," Rhodey insisted.

"You gonna take a shot?" Toni asked.

"PUT IT DOWN. DROP IT TONI," Rhodey shouted.

"TAKE IT," Toni screamed back.

Their repulsor beams collided and created an explosion that shattered all the remaining glass in the room and sent them both flying backwards. The shockwave spilled out behind the mansion leaving a cloud of smoke. Toni lay next to the fireplace under the flickering lights seemingly out cold until the lights in the eyes of the suit came back on and the HUD began analysing the room. Rhodey was walking away and with one look back took flight and left.

"Well, that was heavy," Bruce sighed, "you can come back up now ladies."

A/n – And that's it for today. Hopefully I will see you next week.