Chapter 79 – A Suspicious Video
A/n – I think this is my favourite chapter but that's not hard since I've been looking forward to writing it forever. I hope you guys like it as much as me.
Quill – Thank you for the compliment. Anyone complimenting my Thor is gold to me since I'm insecure about writing him. The well wishes are much appreciated.
Missingwings – I squealed when I got this review just so you know :)
"I'm just counting the amount of things I'm going to have to explain about these scenes," Toni sighed, "Phil and Natasha are lucky as hell for avoiding this shit."
"We're really not going to like this are we," Steve sighed resignedly.
"Nope," Toni said, "but you'll probably enjoy it more than me since I've already had to live through this bullshit. But if I leave then there is literally nobody around to explain everything unless you want to hit up Piper. And even he doesn't know about most of this."
The scene changed to show the stolen Iron Man suit lying on a table while Rhodey removed the arc reactor from its chest. "Think this is the power source?" the Major standing next to Rhodey questioned obviously not knowing a thing about how the suit worked.
"Major, this is not a scientific exercise," Rhodey insisted, "Let's just focus on arming it, all right?"
Toni began muttering darkly under her breath at that comment. Most of what she was saying was unintelligible but they caught snippets like, 'well it should be,' 'it has plenty weapons already' and 'I don't think I can take watching them ruining it.'
Everyone else wisely decided not to comment. They knew that while Toni was just as upset about what Rhodey had done as they were it would not be wise to comment on it. After all they were still friends and no matter what they'd done to her Toni still got mad at you if you insulted her friends too often. Especially when she'd already covered that ground herself. They were lucky to have gotten away with what they had said so far and hence weren't going to push it any further. For now at least. All bets were off for what would happen when someone who had previously not been in the know encountered Rhodey after this experience.
"Yes, sir," the Major said although he was clearly reluctant.
"I would say curiosity is good but he should have been being curious from afar instead of up close so I'm still going to be upset," Toni considered, "it's not like I don't throw plenty of bones to the media about what the suit is capable of. He should be watching the damn news."
"Oh, yes," Hammer declared loudly as he walked into the building, "Oh, yes, yes, yes. Is it my birthday?"
"Seriously," Steve sighed, "hadn't the military put all of his contracts under review. Why are they letting him in on something that should be classified as top secret. I don't even need to know what else he did to know that this is going to end terribly."
"The worst thing is that while Hammer is my 'main competition' and I say that very lightly, there are actually better weapons designers out there who they could have contacted," Toni added, "I'm even friends with some of them from the old days. But Hammer is more convenient despite being a complete slimeball."
"So what you're saying is that the military really needs to start looking for quality instead of convenience," Clint interjected.
"It would certainly make them look less like idiots," Toni said with a smirk, "although I'm not entirely sure they'd be able to avoid looking like idiots entirely. It would at least be an improvement."
Vanko was notably absent as Hammer approached practically whispering reverently, "you got it. What did you do? What did you do?"
"When you gain approval from a man like that it is a sign that what you have done is flawed," Thor noted, "although from his face it does appear like Mr Rhodes may have realised this."
"Is this what I think it is?" Hammer asked.
"That's like asking 'is Hammer an idiot?' the answer is always going to be yes," Bruce snorted. He managed to get a laugh out of Toni too which he considered an achievement considering how morose this section of the movie was making her.
"Yes, it is," the Major said.
"Hammer," Rhodey said immediately cutting in, "I want to know what you're gonna do for us."
"Nothing, he's going to get Vanko to do it all and put a whole load of people in danger," Steve said with a scowl, "I don't even need to see the next bit of the movie to predict that."
"Your glimpse into the future is absolutely correct," Toni told him, "because he's an idiot who lets an criminal work on military projects without supervision from someone who knows what they're doing. It's not like he can spot something dangerous considering he's constantly almost blowing people up with his stupid inventions."
"What am I gonna do for you?" Hammer asked, "Well, the first thing I'm gonna do for you is I'm gonna upgrade your software. And then, second, I think I should…"
Toni made a mocking noise the minute Hammer mentioned upgrading the software. "Sure I managed to improve on the Mark 2 but he couldn't even make an equivalent to the Mark 1," she mocked, "besides there's a reason I stopped using that suit after the first test run and while the icing problem was part of it that wasn't the whole thing."
"Besides he's going to have some real trouble with update without JARVIS controlling it right," Clint wondered.
"Pretty much," Toni said with a smirk, "it's a shame he had Vanko cause otherwise I would have gotten to watch him crash and burn at the Expo. It would have been hilarious. But I suppose he is suffering more keenly for actually causing trouble so there is that."
"That's not what I'm talking about," Rhodey interrupted, "I'm talking about firepower."
"Bloody military types have no subtlety," Toni muttered, "honestly Rhodey you've known me since college and you still believe that being smart about it is not the first way to go. Even if that was ruled out by going to Hammer in the first place. Idiot!"
"There's more to life than who has the biggest guns," Steve agreed, "you can win a fight with far inferior equipment if you use what you have more efficiently."
"Exactly," Toni said pleased that Steve had gotten her point.
"Well, you're talking to the right guy," Hammer said as he obnoxiously crunched down on a lollipop.
"NO, YOU'RE NOT," the entire room shouted in unison. You could even hear Natasha and Phil shouting through the intercom. If one thing was for sure it was the fact that all of the Avengers and their associates really hated Hammer.
Hammer held a gun up in the air as he named it while Rhodey looked on unimpressed, "Claridge Hi-Tec, semi-automatic, 9mm pistol," upon seeing the sceptical looks he quickly added, "too downtown. I agree."
"And yet it was your first choice," Clint mocked.
He set it down and picked up another gun, "M24 shotgun, pump action. Five-round magazine," he quickly backtracked again on seeing Rhodey's face, "you know what? You're not a hunter. What am I talking about? I'm getting rid of it."
"Who knows?" Toni snorted, "certainly not anyone who still has their sanity."
"This is the FN-2000 from Belgium," Hammer said as he pulled out the largest gun yet, "They do make something better than waffles."
"Is he even thinking about how he's going to attach these guns to the suit?" Bruce scoffed, "I mean most of them would have to stick out ruining the aerodynamics. And they'd add excess weight which would weigh the suit down."
Upon seeing the unchanged faces he continued, "It's beautiful, but I can tell this isn't disco enough for you, so I'm gonna put it right here." The pile of guns on the table was growing extraordinarily fast. He moved on to something else, "You're looking at a Milkor 40mm grenade launcher. Tear gas, smoke. Hippie control."
"And he strikes out yet again," Clint laughed upon seeing the faces that Rhodey and the Major were still pulling.
"You're tough," Hammer covered as if it was just him underestimating how badass they were that was making him make terrible decisions. He put the gun down and moved on yet again, "Let me tell you something. Size does matter. Don't let anyone tell you different."
"And just when we thought he couldn't get any more creepy," Toni said blanching at the mere thought, "also I believe Bruce has already established on why using large guns on a suit is a bad idea."
"This is an M134 7 point 62 Minigun," Hammer said clearly not ready to give up yet, "Six individual barrels. The torso taker, powder baker. Our boys in uniform call it Uncle Gazpacho, or Puff the Magic Dragon."
"Does he give all of his weapons stupid names?" Thor wondered.
"It seems incredibly likely," Clint said thinking that the answer to that should have been a given really.
Hammer looked hopefully at Rhodey for a few seconds before sighing and saying, "Okay," and putting it on the table with the others. "These are the Cubans, baby," Hammer said as he brought out a box, "This is the Cohibas, the Montecristos."
"Because we really needed him to compare his weapons to really good cigars right now," Toni sighed, "why will this scene not end? Surely this isn't all that important for us to know."
He opened the box and pulled out something that looked like a rather large pen before explaining, "This is a kinetic-sill, side-winder vehicle with a secondary cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine RDX burst," he handed it to Rhodey while continuing, "It's capable of busting the bunker under the bunker you just busted. If it were any smarter, it would write a book. A book that would make 'Ulysses' look like it was written in crayon. It would read it to you."
"And hence it was definitely not your idea," Toni said.
"He is really overselling his designs at this point," Clint chuckled, "which is good because it means that he's nervous and Hammer being nervous and flustered is one of my new favourite things alongside pranking Fury and vents."
"And we all know how much you love the vents since you keep getting sprayed by foam every time you try and explore them," Toni pointed out.
Clint looked slightly sheepish as everyone else in the room laughed at his misfortune. It had stopped being funny for him a while ago but for some reason he just couldn't risk the temptation to try and make his way through the tower via the vents even when he knew what was coming. Natasha teased him about it incessantly.
"This is my Eiffel Tower," he said while taking it back – obviously this was his last card to play, "This is my Rachmaninoff's Third. My Pieta. It's completely elegant. It's baffling beautiful. And it's capable of reducing the population of any standing structure to zero."
"Which automatically makes it too dangerous to let anyone ever get their hands on it," Steve sighed, "we've seen how this world treats WMD's and it is not pretty."
"I call it the Ex-Wife," Hammer rounded up.
Toni snorted loudly and it took a while before she could stop laughing and actually make a comment, "like he's ever been in a relationship that lasted more than ten minutes."
Rhodey finally changed his expression as he considered the weapon. Hammer brought it up to his nose to sniff like a cigar and then said, "That's the best I got." He put it back in its box and turned to face Rhodey again, "Are we gonna do this? Give me something here. You're like a sphinx. I can't read you."
"Mainly because you're an idiot," Bruce commented, "it's obvious that he's interested now."
"I think I'll take it," Rhodey said.
"Which one?" Hammer asked.
"All of it," Rhodey told him.
"And this is where the problems with War Machine began," Toni sighed, "honestly if he'd even asked me I would have come up with something far better. There is such a thing as too much firepower."
"All of it," Hammer repeated disbelievingly.
"Well, thank god that's over," Toni sighed, "I swear that scene took forever."
The scene changed to show Toni putting the crate with her father's name on down on the floor of her lab. She opened it to reveal blueprints for the arc reactor with Anton Vanko's name on, a newspaper article about Vanko's defection to the States, and some rolls of film.
"Why am I putting myself through this," Toni asked herself disbelievingly. She was predicting that everyone would ask her a million questions about why she was still upset about her father when he'd made the video they were about to see. The truth was that there were a million reasons but she didn't exactly want to tell anyone any of them. Making herself vulnerable was not something that she did and she wasn't about to start now even if these people had become her friends. Being vulnerable just got you hurt in a myriad of different ways and it had been a long time since she'd even let someone get as close as the Avengers were. And part of that was only because Amora was a bitch who had set this whole thing up apparently to torture her since practically every movie so far was focused on her life.
Toni had obviously set up an old fashioned projector as she watched her father talking on the screen from the same location that he had in the Stark Expo video, "Everything is achievable through technology," Toni sat back in her chair flipping through the books from the chest absentmindedly while she watched, "Better living, robust health and for the first time in human history, the possibility of world peace."
"Yeah well that went down the drain fairly quickly," Toni drawled, "and would have sucked for you since all you did was make fucking weapons. Didn't even bother diversifying until I started coming up with things did you?"
Wisely nobody else in the room decided to comment. Every instinct in their bodies was telling them that talking during this section would be extremely dangerous to their health.
"I'm Howard Stark," Howard continued, "and everything you'll need for the future can be found right here. City of the Future? City of Tomorrow? City of…" Here he paused obviously deciding that that take wasn't going to work and paced about for a bit before starting again, "I'm Howard Stark, and everything you'll need in the future can be found right here," in the background a young Toni popped up with her hair in pigtails to try and grab some of the diorama.
"Okay, you were a cute kid," Clint said, "and you cannot hit me for saying that because you clearly were."
"Thank you very much," Toni drawled before hitting him anyway. She wasn't going to let him get any ideas.
"So, from all of us at Stark Industries, I would like to personally…" Howard suddenly stopped as he turned around and spotted Toni, "Toni, what are you doing back there? What is that? Put that back. Put it back where you got it from."
Here Toni's expression visibly drooped as she sadly put the piece of diorama back as asked.
"Yeah, that was a common thing," Toni commented, "it didn't happen so often after I got better at sneaking around though."
Steve didn't know what to think of that. The Howard he had known had been keen to support technological experimentation in anyone no matter what their age. To see him discourage his own daughter like that when she was clearly interested in his work wasn't something he would have expected. But he was starting to accept that more things had changed since he went under than simply the technology and laws.
"Where's your mother?" Howard asked, "Maria?" An employee with an earpiece in came in and lifted Toni up to remove her from the room as Howard said, "Go on, go, go, go!"
He turned back to the cameraman after that and stuttered, "All right, I think we got… I'll… I'll come in and…" Here the camera feed glitched out and changed to show Howard sitting at his desk drinking.
"Guess where I got that bad habit from," Toni deadpanned. Although the truth was that she didn't drink much nowadays because she wanted to be more in control of herself than she normally was when she was drunk. Plus she had gotten really good at faking it so it's only other purpose was gone.
"Are you waiting on me?" the cameraman asked as Howard held up a finger telling him to wait.
The scene changed again to Howard being back in the room from earlier saying, "So, from all of us at Stark Industries, I'd like to personally show you… my ass. I'd like to… I can't… This is… I can't… We have this, don't we? This is a ridiculous way…"
Toni appeared slightly more interested in the video itself now that Howard wasn't being portrayed as perfect. She was certainly watching much more intently. She eventually turned back to the book with Howard continuing in the background, "Everything is achievable through technology."
"I'm not really seeing the point of this video yet," Bruce commented.
"Neither was I at that point," Toni mentioned, "it'll get there eventually."
Toni dumped the book down obviously realising it wouldn't help her before taking a sip of her glass of coke. She didn't look up again until Howard said, "Toni?"
"You're too young to understand this right now," Howard continued, "so I thought I would put it on film for you. I built this for you. And someday you'll realise that it represents a whole lot more than just people's inventions. It represents my life's work. This is the key to the future," here the camera panned over to show shots of the diorama, "I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is and always will be my greatest creation is you."
"That all sounds very nice but it also sounds a bit like he's trying to take credit for you being clever because he's your father," Bruce said, "it's a little diminishing of your accomplishments Toni since half the stuff you've done your father would never even have dreamed about."
"I know right," Toni commented, "that was basically my first thought when I heard that for the first time."
Steve had been considering this a very positive message up until that point but he realised that what Bruce and Toni were saying about alternate meanings was also true. He couldn't just assume that Howard had meant what he said in the best possible way because he had known the man ninety years ago. And that was a nuance that he had long been missing.
A/n – Yep, it's late again. I'm afraid you'll just have to deal with it since I can't afford decent voice transcription software and I have to type one handed and in stages. I hope you enjoyed this anyway. It's certainly my favourite chapter so far.