Could the Situation be Any Worse?!

"Are you still there?" Pepper asked. The last thing she heard was Tony telling her that he'd pull over, then the sound of air, and then rustling.

"Hmm," she said, starting to get nervous.

"Come on Tony, jokes over. I know you're still there."

More silence.

"Oh, stop your worrying," Pepper thought. Reluctantly she hung up and went to check with Jarvis on the whereabouts of Tony's car. Good thing Tony had installed GPS trackers on all of them.

"Jarvis, can you locate Tony's car for me?"

"Right away Miss Potts," Jarvis responded in his usual robotic voice.

"It seems his car has stopped on the side of this road here."

A small arrow on a computerized map appeared on the TV screen. Pepper quickly grabbed her coat and hurried towards the door.

"Excuse me Miss, but may I ask where you are going?"

"I'm going to go find him," Pepper responded.

After 30 grueling minutes, Pepper finally arrived at the spot Tony had pulled over at. It was 2:45 in the morning and Pepper was exhausted, but as soon as she neared the indicated point on her GPS, she forgot her exhaustion within seconds. Driving along the winding road that was hugging to the side of a cliff, Pepper looked around. According to the GPS, Tony's car should be right here…

"Oh my God," she breathed as she rounded a bend. Two ambulances and multiple police cars were parked next to a completely wrecked SUV. She looked around and sighed in relief as she saw Colonel James Rhodes. He would know what happened.

"Rhodes!" she called through the crowd of police officers and paramedics.

She quickly walked over to him.

"What happened? Where's Tony?"

"We don't have much to work with here Pepper, but we believe he was dragged out of the car by someone," Rhodes explained calmly.

"What!?" Pepper almost screamed at him. "You mean someone kidnapped him?" "Where's his car?"

"Slow down Pepper," Rhodes said soothingly. "The car seems to have rolled off this ledge and into the trees below. The ledge isn't that high, but the rolling and the crash into the trees did some serious damage."

"Can I see the car?" Pepper asked.

"Well…" Rhodes started.

"What is it?" Pepper asked in alarm.

"There's nothing much to see…" Rhodes continued.

Dread filled Pepper. Tony would be so mad to have his favorite car burnt to pieces.

"Well what about Tony?" Pepper asked. "Where is he?"

"We do have one lead."

Rhodes took out a piece of paper and handed it to Pepper.

"Does this name mean anything to you?" He asked softly.

Pepper looked down at the paper.

Your friend is in safe hands.

Nick Fury

The name sounded familiar. Pepper was sure she heard Tony mention this mysterious man once or twice. Not that he had mentioned it to Pepper directly. Every time Pepper heard the name, Tony was usually whispering to Jarvis privately. That is, before he began to drink. Pepper knew that the past couple of weeks had been hard on Tony, but his drinking problem was becoming worse than ever. She tried to find a reason for his drinking, but all she found was a couple of New York newspapers with the famous "Web-Slinger" on the font cover, and some with "The Hulk" on the front. The only thing she found suspicious was the odd looking shield resting on Tony's table. When she asked him about it, he only replied hastily back, "It's nothing. Just a project," before he hurried her out of the room.

"Hey, Pepper? You still with me?" Rhodes asked.

"Yeah," Pepper said quickly. "Just thinking…"

"Maybe you should go home Pepper." "I'll call you when we find more to leads."

Pepper sighed as she was led back to her car by an officer. As she started to drive back, she found herself staring at the oddly shaped claw marks on the guard rail.

"What kind of animal has three claws powerful enough to cut through that guard rail?" she asked herself as she drove off into the dark night.

Author's Note: I've decided to put the author's note down here so you don't have to read it unless you want to. If anyone actually reads this:

A big thanks goes out to the first four people who reviewed my story :) You guys made my day! I didn't know I would be so excited to see that someone actually reviewed my story! Well, you managed to have me thinking about it for a whole day! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and then actually REVIEW my story!! It means a lot to me and I really appreciate it. I'm sorry these chapters are so short, and if there are any mistakes, please tell me and I will fix them as soon as I can. I'll try to make up for the shortness of the chapters by updating as frequently as I can. I also just noticed that the last words are "the dark night". Unfortunately Batman is not a Marvel character, so I take no credit in alluding to the Dark Knight movie coming out :( It would make me feel so clever :D Oh well… Alright. Enough of me talking. Hope you enjoy the story.

By the way, I have not planned out anything for this story, so we'll just have to see where this story goes on its own…