Hey, guys! Sorry this one is a little bit late- I was busy playing video games.

*sigh* The author has moved on to Assassin's Creed from Portal. It's a self-destructive spiral.

I like it. You get awesome wrist-blade things.

At least Portal made you think.

You're just grumpy because you don't even like killing digital people.

Shaddup. Roll story.

Flashback

"What did you do again?" Tony repeated. His two semi-adopted twins were standing in front of him, looking exceptionally embarrassed. They were staring at their feet and the tips of their ears were the same shade of red as Tony's suit.

"It wasn't our fault," Taylor mumbled weakly. Tyler rose an eyebrow.

"Oh, it wasn't our fault alright. It was your fault."

"It was your idea!"

"I meant it as a joke!"

Tony groaned and seperated the quarreling siblings. "Taylor, tell me what happened. Then Tyler can tell me his version. Then I'll decide who's to blame for this."

Taylor began her story. "Okay, so all of the Avengers were gone for a few hours on a mission earlier today. You guys left us alone..."

"...and I now see that was a mistake. Continue."

"Thor wasn't with you guys. He was taking a weekend to be with Jane and left Mjolnir here. And, well, Tyler and I started getting bored. So we played Truth or Dare for a while until he dared me to try to pick up the hammer."

"Why?"

"I have Thor's powers. We wanted to know if it would work, is all. I could pick it up, but then I wanted to find out if I could make it fly really far and come back to me like Uncle Thor could. Obviously, that was a bit of a failure."

"What Taylor means to say is, she took the hammer up to the roof and then dropped it. It reached terminal velocity on the way down and embedded itself in the concrete right outside the door," Tyler broke in.

"Embedded is a bit of an understatement," Taylor admitted. "I'd say buried. About eight feet."

"Yeah, I noticed that part. There are backhoes outside trying to get it out."

End Flashback

When Tyler regained conciousness, his sister was a few feet away, playing with something that looked very potentially dangerous. Despite his decreased mental facilities, Tyler felt a duty to protect his little sister. He didn't take into account the effect that two extremely lightning bolts within ten minutes would have on a person's sense of balance. That's why, instead of lightly sliding off of his bed, he clumsily flopped off of the makeshift bed that Taylor had apparently constructed for him out of a lab table.

"Taylor?"

His sister looked up in surprise, momentarily distracted from the object in her hands. "Yes? You need a hand?"

"Maybe, but before you do that, please put that thing down. It's making me nervous."

"Fine." She did so and slid to her feet with a grace that Tyler envied. His sister might not be as smart as he was, but she moved, well, like you'd expect from the DNA of Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers. DNA stands for deoxyribonucleac acid. We're all made of acid, Tyler thought absently. One of the bonuses of being a genuis was being able to think about two or sometimes three things at once. For example, at the moment, Tyler was both monitering Taylor's progress towards him and thinking about genetics.

"Thanks," Tyler grunted as she hauled him up. He noted that she only needed one arm to do it. Maybe he was developing an inferiority complex. He imagined himself calling a hotline.

"Hello? Yeah, I'm Tyler Stark, Tony Stark's son... yeah, he has a son. It's a long story. No, I don't feel inferior to him, it's my sister. Why are you laughing?"

Tyler himself was actually laughing at the moment, forcing his sister to quickly switch her concerned gaze back and forth between him and their father, who had also been propped up on a lab table. He didn't look good. His face was pale, and he had a badly bloody nose. What drew Tyler's attention, however, was the Arc Reactor sunk into his chest. It was much brighter then it was supposed to be, and letting off more sparks then a firework.

"You woke up just in time, Ty. I have no idea what to do to fix Dad's heart," Taylor confessed, looking suitably worried.

Tyler made his way over to his father and frowned. "There's too much electricity packed into the reactor. In the future, it would just be absorbed and recycled, but this is an earlier model. We need to reroute the energy to somewhere else. Hand me something."

"What?"

"One of the inventions in here. One that looks dead. And grab me the all-purpose cord on the table to my right," Tyler mumbled. He wasn't worried too much about the conversation. He was worried about the Arc Reactor. He had helped his dad fix his tech plenty of times, but this version of the Arc didn't have all the fallbacks and failsafes built into its decendants. He flipped a tiny panel open and surveyed the micro-circuitry. Ohhh. That was not good.

"Taylor, scratch that last order. I'm going to need protective gear and a blowtorch," Tylor said, wincing. He heard the loud crash from behind him as she presumably dropped whatever she was holding and changed directions. On an ordinary day, he would order her to be more careful, but this was no ordinary day. Their father's life was on the line. Taylor seemed to grap the seriousness of the situation as well, because not one snide comment was passed as she handed him an apron and blowtorch, which was very out of character for her.

The regulator linking the power source- AKA, the reactor- to the electromagnet keeping shrapnel away from their father's heart was blown out. Tyler had to fix it before his dad suddenly got a lot of new holes. Tyler snapped on the mask that Taylor handed to him and set to work.

So, updates should be faster over Christmas Break, which is really soon. Until then, you guys are awesome!