**And I still own nothing – go figure ;)**
Toni's Point of View
From: Genius Extraordinaire
To: Super-Agent P to the C
Sent:
Subject: I won't take it personally that you find Fury more interesting than me
Condition - I get to be me
Toni stared at the screen of her tonEE-Pad - good thing she wasn't looking to sell it or she would have to think up a snazzier name. Personally she thought the tonEE-Pad was a really good name which was why the device was staying hers. And only hers.
The sent e-mail was mocking her. What had she been thinking? She didn't really know. The condition had come to her in a flash when she had been speaking to Phil and she had already typed and sent the e-mail before she had hung up the phone.
But now that she was thinking about it she felt so stupid, so childish with her request. What were the chances of any of the 'team' taking her seriously and treating her as an equal member of the Avengers if she walked in as she was now? Toni Stark, teen genius. They would laugh her out of the building without wearing Anthony Stark, playboy and genius. As it stood Tony Stark wasn't loved by everyone and she wouldn't be surprised if he…she(damn it, she didn't know how to talk about herself anymore)had the prejudice of more than a few people to deal with.
Brilliant. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn't.
But I know how to deal as Anthony Stark. I don't know how to be Toni in public...not really.
"JARVIS,"
Her voice filled the silence of her lab. She looked around it. She wasn't sure she liked it. It was too shiny and new. Her lab back home was filled with half-finished projects, scratches and there was still some rubble from her sudden need to remodel last year - she had nursed a torn muscle in her shoulder for weeks after that, but boy had it been fun.
"Yes, Miss,"
"Retrieve the e-mail I just sent to Phil and replace the message with, 'No conditions need to be met'"
"Very well Miss"
"And JARVIS," she turned back to her tonEE-Pad and turned it on its side, bringing up the schematics of an Iron Man suit "begin running diagnostics on the Mark 7,"
"Diagnostic running,"
"Thanks J," she replied, feeling more tired in this one moment than she ever had in her life. She flicked the schematics to the side and brought up another image, with a few hand swivels she 'threw' the image from the screen of the Pad and into the centre of the room.
She kicked herself from the table, the wheelie chair skittering across the room to stop inches before her head distorted the image. She stood, pushed the chair back to the desk and began circling the image before heading to a cabinet standing quit innocently by the soldering bench and racked through it, pulling out spools of wire and cable, along with a roll of insulation.
She opened more drawers, pushing things aside in agitation, unable to locate what she was looking for. Another thing she hated about this new lab. She couldn't find anything!
"JARVIS," she called, her head in the deep bottom drawer, "We did bring the box of bits didn't we? I can't find it!"
She never went anywhere without the box. It was filled with...well...bits. Pieces from all sorts of things that on their own wouldn't be too helpful but it kept her amused to fiddle with them and make random stuff or sometimes there was a final piece to a current project hiding away in it.
Right now there was everything from an old TV remote to the cap off a toothpaste tube.
She knew exactly what she needed out of it.
"Might I suggest the cabinet beneath your desk, Miss,"
She shuffled around on her knees and looked at her desk, glaring at the grey cabinet. She had forgotten about that. It had been Pip's great idea to come up with under the desk storage for her lab so she didn't 'break her neck' by tripping over paper clip, pen...spare chest piece that could blow them all to smithereens.
The first thing she did when she got to the desk was slide the whole thing out from under the workstation and plant it next to her desk instead.
There.
It looked so much happier next to the desk and not under it.
She quickly found her box of bits and mumbled a "You're the man, Jarvis," at the room. She tipped it out over the desk, ghosting her fingers over the spread content, pushing some items aside in favour of others while making up a little pile.
"Jarvis transfer image to Projection Point 1 –"the room dimmed at her back as the image vanished from the centre of the room to reappear to her right, hovering in miniature just above the surface of her desk. She spun it, changing the angle. Nodding her head in satisfaction and held the now empty box at the edge of the table and swept everything that had not been put into the pile back into it.
Crossing her arms over her chest she studied the image.
"Jarvis, begin a new file, leave the title blank and save to my own server," she told him, beginning to make changes to the image before her in her mind, seeing what the final product would be in her mind's eye. Yes, it would do the job perfectly.
She had tried to hack into SHIELDs system before she had contacted Phil but whatever they were hiding – and they were hiding something she knew it – they were hiding it good. No, if she wanted to get to the bottom of it she would have to do so from the inside. And modifying the all-frequencies jamming bug would do the trick nicely. A few changes here and there and she would be all set to start scanning.
"Not another secret project, Miss," JARVIS almost sounded like he was whining. She would have to ease up on the personality upgrades or she would have two Nannies instead of just Pip.
"Just what is wrong with my secret projects?" she demanded, bringing up another image of the internal systems of the bug and noting what would have to stay and what would have to go… and she would have to make it a bit smaller – she doubted shield would have a handy flowerpot hanging around for her to dump it on.
She pulled out a hidden hearing aid and unclipped the side, sliding out the tiny battery.
Her smile grew wide and devious.
It was better than the perfect size!
"Your last secret project resulted in the Iron Man Suit, Miss,"
Oops, she had forgotten about JARVIS.
"Aaand?" she questioned.
"According to my data since the completion of the Mark 2 suit you have nearly died six times – all times with a direct link to the suit,"
"Wow, you are getting as bad as Pip, JARVIS," she told him dryly.
"I am attempting to make the point that secret projects appear to be bad for your health, Miss"
"Duly noted, Jarvis. Duly noted… Now, let's get to work," she rubbed her hands together, this was going to be fun.
Six hours later
Toni yawned sleepily, staggering up the stairs from the lab and stumbling down the hallway to her bedroom, clutching a small box in her hands.
She collapsed onto her bed and sighed in relief as she sank into the mattress. Pip was right; her late night invention sessions were not healthy (especially as they happened more often than not). When she got an idea she just found it impossible to stop until she was finished. And that was just what had happened now. She had worked through the night to complete the bug. She squeezed the box and put it onto her night stand. Anyone looking at the small cube would assume it contained a necklace…or maybe a ring. They would never guess that it was ground-breaking bit of hack-ware.
The last hour had been spent running some simulations and checking the signal strength and consistency. This had left her with nothing else to do but to read through the evaluations of the other Avengers.
Her eyebrows had vanished into her hairline when she saw that there was only going to be one other woman on the team. She tried not to let it bug her and failed miserably.
So, they had two kick-butt-kill-you-with-a-paper-clip assassins – she found Clinton Barton's weapon of choice fascinating.
I wonder if the Hawkeye dude would teach me how to use a bow and arrow if I asked nicely?
From what she could figure out though the two SHIELD agents were more like babysitters. There to make sure that the super-heroes played nicely with each other.
Next there was Bruce Banner. Hulk. She had shaken her head sadly at that. They were going to drag the poor man into this mess. She had seen the footage from a few years ago when he had… Was there a technical term for it? Gone green? Hulked out? Gotten angry. There! It wasn't a pretty sight and she knew that the doctor had spent all of his time and resources since the accident with the radiation looking for a way to reverse the effects. She felt truly sad for the man whose like had been ruined in such a way. But it was fascinating, like an extreme Jekyll and Hyde and she admitted to some slight fan-girl tendencies when it came to Doctor Banner, some of his academic papers were truly genius.
And then, last but not least, there was the original all American hero. Steven Rogers, better known as, Captain America. The scientist in her was amazed that the man had survived as long as he had and she mentally tipped her head to her father for his share in making the serum.
Toni felt like the whole Avengers gig sounded like the beginning of a bad bar joke. Two assassins, a tin man, a green man and an ice man all walk into a bar-
Personally she didn't see the team surviving everyone's egos. But hey, if Fury wanted to play defender of the planet who was she to draw his attention to that depressing fact? Besides it would me much too entertaining to watch him discover it for himself.
She blinked open her lids and looked through bleary eyes at her bedside clock. 7:52AM. the numbers danced a little in her vision until she could focus. She kicked off her shoes, narrowly avoiding rolling of the bed and landing in a painful heap on the floor.
She managed to wriggle out of her jeans and yank her shirt over her head, climbing under the cool covers in her underwear. The slight chill to the bedding was heavenly.
"JARVIS, wake me up in five hours please,"
"Of course, miss,"
"Lights out,"
The room fell into darkness and Toni snuggled in, ready for a well-earned sleep after spending the night planning some good old-fashioned treason.
Nick Fury's Point of View
Nick Fury Director of SHIELD stood on the bridge of the Helicarrier.
Everything was coming together.
He had received a call from Steve Rogers the night before, telling him that he was 'in'. Fury had wasted no time in getting hold of Coulson and having him do a U-turn to retrieve the captain.
Romanoff had called in to say that she had retrieved Bruce Banner without incident and were on route to the Helicarrier. Fury was glad that he had pushed ahead with the preparations for Banner's arrival. He was ready for the Hulk if the beast put the operation in danger.
And finally there was Toni Stark. He had received her e-mail late in the night, forwarded from Coulson.
'No conditions need to be met'
Coulson had told him about Stark being willing to help if a condition was met. He wondered what had changed her mind.
He had a soft spot for the girl he had met just over a year ago. She was a strange little thing, an interesting mixture of wisdom and immaturity. She was far from perfect and her smart ass attitude did tend to get on his nerves after a while.
"I'm sorry, I don't want to get off on the wrong foot here. Do I look at the patch or the eye?"
And she had zero brain to mouth filter most of the time. He smiled slightly at the memory and he glared at the shocked face of one of the bridge hands.
But she had handled herself well all things considered when they had first met – OK, she had made him swallow (and choke) on his own words about Howard Stark – and he had no doubt that she would make a good team member.
Yes…it was all coming together.
Hi guys.
Soooo what do you think? I even threw in a little bit of Fury for you all :) And Toni making the 'bug' because, I wanted too :)
I meant to have this chapter up sooner but I have a nasty virus currently beating my system to smithereens so everything has been a bit stilted this week.:(
Feedback is yummy and good and nice and makes fairies very happy :)