Man this chapter just went right from my head to computer very easily. I just couldn't stop typing! Well these are the chapters everyone has been looking forward to the most ;D . Alisha is at Tyler's place and for once he is not being a complete ass! Wow what a shock. Well I think people will be pleasantly surprised with this chapter!
I do not own the Avengers team they belong to marvel and Stan Lee (God bless him)
Over the next week Alisha and Tyler started talking more, getting to know one another. Of course they would push each other buttons, but nothing further then playful bantering between them. Like before Alisha was a bit on edge about Tyler's new attitude, but after the first 3 days she relaxed and enjoyed it, even if it wasn't permanent and stopped one day.
Alisha spent most of her nights in the barn, without telling Steve or Susan, working on her small time travel device. Instead of transporting a large object with someone inside, she had discovered that as long as you where touching the object, theoretically, your body and everything else would follow.
When she went out to the barn, she would wait till Steve and Susan went to bed. Once asleep she would go in the attic, open the window on the opposite side of the house from Steve and Susan's room, climb down a rope she had found in the barn, and slowly head over to the barn. She had placed a secret camera on the roof so she could check to see if anyone was coming, and if they where she would climb to the roof and wait for them to go inside until she pulled the string on her backpack and took a roundabout trip to the house and then sneak back into her room.
She didn't particularly like sneaking around but she really wanted to get this project finished with. She had decided to tell Steve what she had been up to this week the day before she left. That night she had finished the bracelet and was planning on testing it out when she thought of a way to take a large amount of power with her to the past to recharge the power cell she was using.
"Morning Susan" Alisha said around 7am.
"Morning Alisha. Here is a little something to eat before you go out and take care of Holmes" She said, handing Alisha an apple and some toast. "The rest will be ready when you get back."
"Thanks'" Alisha said, biting into the toast and putting the apple into her pocket. Since the second day there, she had been given the responsibility of taking care of her horse. She enjoyed spending time with the goof-of-a-horse. Every morning she would take him to a tether next to the arena with some tools, brushing him, cleaning the dirt and grime from his hooves, comb out his main an tail, then clipping a 12 foot rope to his harness and having him trot around her for a bit of wake up exercise. After that she would put him in the gated pasture behind the barn and put some hay down for him.
She spent an hour and a half out there before she left him in the pasture and headed back to the house. Mira and Steve where sitting at the island eating breakfast. Seemed like the family only ate at the dining table during diner.
"Morning everyone." She said as she sat down between Steve and Mira.
"Morning." Steve and Mira said as Susan put a plate of bacon, egg, and fruit down for her with a glass of milk. It smelt so good Alisha took a deep breath of the steam wafting off of it before she dug in.
"You really make the best food Susan. I always enjoy your cooking" She said between bites of her food.
"You don't have to say that every morning" Susan complained, but added some more bacon and eggs to her plate with a smile.
"But it's true. It's so good." Alisha smiled then continued eating. 10 minutes of appreciative silence go by before they all hear the door to the basement open up. Alisha turned around to see Tyler in his thin, baggy, pajama pants without shirt or shoes, and his bed head of dirty blond hair. The first time he came up like this Alisha couldn't help but blush at his beautifully naked chest, but since he did this every morning she grew use to it, even though she still blushed a little.
He looked over at Alisha, walked over to her, and before she could do anything he swiped a strip of bacon from her plate. She responded with an elbow in his side before she hovered over her food, fork at the ready. "And a good morning to you too, your royal pain-in-the-posterior."
"Hmmmmmm, good bacon." Tyler said with a smile, licking his fingers.
"Sit down Tyler. Your food is over here and stop stealing from other plates" Susan said, pointing her spatula at him. He lifted his hands defensively as he walked over and sat down. Tyler woke up every morning before the sun rose to take care of his horse, then after he was finished he would go right back to bed. Alisha couldn't really wrap her head around this fact until that night, when she was practically finished with her project and not paying attention to the camera, someone had knocked on her stall wall, making her jump and nearly drop her work.
"You know my Dad would be very irked if he found out this is what you have been doing instead of sleeping." He had said, leaning on the frame of the door, the moonlight from outside bringing out his outline.
"I know, I plan on telling him before I leave. I don't like to sneak around but I had to get this done before my Father saw. I want to knock the pants off him and show him I can be just as good as he is" Alisha said determinedly, putting her goggles back on and getting back to fusing some wires together. After about five minutes she stopped and looked behind her. "What are you doing out so early? The sun isn't even up."
"I always come out this early to take care of Sly. Then I go back to bed" he said shrugging and leaving her to her work.
"So how did you sleep last night?" Tyler asked, scooping some eggs into his mouth.
"Not very restful. I got interrupted but something large and slow and overly self confident" Alisha said, clearing her plate off and bringing it over to the sink with Mira right behind her.
"Hmmmmm, sounds like you have a problem Alisha." He said with a smiled, taking a bit out of a fresh ripe strawberry and smiling mischievously at her.
"Yah, I am going to have to fix it and soon" She smiled and looked over at him intently.
"I don't know, that thing may not be going anywhere any time soon. You never know" Tyler said, taking his own plate over to the sink as well. They both smiled at each other and turned around to have Mira, Steve, and Susan watching them with the most confused looks on their faces. Tyler looked at Alisha, popped a grape in his mouth, and winked at her on the side that no one could see. She rolled her eyes but smiled anyway.
"Steve, would it be ok if I go back out to the barn for the first part of the day? I am just about finished with my project…Please" she added at the end to be polite.
"Sure, I see no problem. Unless Susan has something she wants you to do." Steve said, and then looked at his wife.
"Nope you are good. I have to take Mira to school anyway then go shopping for a little. Her last day is tomorrow then she is in 2nd grade next year." Susan said as she got Mira's school bag for her. "You guys are on your own for lunch today." And they were out the door.
"You heard the lady, go ahead." Steve said with a smile.
"Thanks" she smiled and ran out the door. She had her gold backpack on her because she had placed a few things in it from a few nights ago to work on while she was waiting for everyone to go to sleep; she spent an hour setting up the cells to charge to the arc reactor of her Iron Maiden suit. Once charged she had JARVIS run some scans and redo the calculations on her time travel notes and calibrations.
"All good Miss and if it is successful I do believe your father will be most envious and very proud." JARVIS said from the opened face plate of her suit.
"Thank you JARVIS, I am looking forward to that moment in time" She said as she slowly and carefully detached the charging wires from the chest of her suit. She put it on her right wrist and looked at it.
"Soooooooo, nice accessory you got there." Tyler said from behind her. Once again, he had snuck up on her twice in one day. She was going to have to put a motion detector in the camera if this kept up. Or she was going to have to keep her mental sweeping up even when working, something she hadn't been able to do yet.
"It's my project." She said going over it one last time before she was going to put it down and begin to make an arc reactor like the one in her suit, so she could charge the bracelet to get back after reconfiguring it with tools she was planning on bringing.
"So, what is it; a way to help your balance because I hate to tell you, but they have already done that." He said, walking over to her.
"No Tyler, I think it is MUCH more complicated than an electromagnetic pulse circulating threw a bracelet then into your body." Alisha sighed out, a little annoyed. He had been trying to get her to crack about her project every time he was out here with her. It was getting a little annoying.
Tyler looked at her and then placed his hand on the back on his neck, rubbing absentmindedly. "Do you have any plans tonight Alisha?" he asked.
Her back was facing him as she got back to work. "Well I am going to be working on this until I get it right so I don't know. It depends." She said to her project, not moving from her spot.
"Alisha you need to take a break. Relax a little. I know, how about a late night horseback ride?!" Tyler suggested, a little more hinting at something, leading her to something he had planned. He wanted to apologies to her for everything he had done to her, and he had found the best way to do it with the help of Tiana and Teralin.
"Like I said, it all depends on how I do with this" She said, still not facing him.
He glowered at her then walked up behind her. "Are you making a way to help you concentrate?"
"No."
"A method of making you smarter?"
"No" she said, placing her tool back down on the table.
"A way to make you more sexy?" he asked in a husky voice.
"NO Tyler, it is none of those. I told you to not bother me while I am working. You can watch and ask occasional questions that I may or may not answer, but when I tell you to stop, you need to stop" She said, pointing her right index finger at him.
Without warning, he grabbed her wrist and turned the time travel device on. It felt like she was being pulled threw a very small hole by her hand. She felt like she was going to be squeezed to death before everything stopped and she landed right on top of Tyler in the middle of a small ally. She took a deep breath to calm herself before she looked around. Somehow they were in Malibu and not in the New York country.
"No." She said, looking at the bracelet as it went out, lost of all power. "No, no, NO THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!" She yelled shaking her arm and pressing the power button, even though she knew it wouldn't work.
"Don't worry, it's not that bad. Mine stopped working ages ago." A very old man said as he walked by them and disappeared into the crowd. He was balding slightly, had thin white hair that was straight past his ears, and an upbeat voice.
"Ooooooooooooohhhhhhhh what the hell just happened" Tyler said as he still lay on the ground.
Alisha turned her attention to the now rising Tyler and glared, striding over to him. She placed her hands on his sweatshirt, grasped the fabric firmly in her grip, and began shaking him as violently as a 5'3 small woman could shake a 6'1 leanish muscular man.
"Why the hell didn't you listen to me Tyler Bucky Rogers! Why couldn't you have just stopped talking and let me get back to work" She whispered venomously.
"Hey, no one can call me that but my Mom and Dad." Tyler said, taking her hands off of his sweatshirt and glaring down at her.
She balled her hands into fists and punched him in the side, making him fall to the ground. "We, are, in, the, PAST you fucking idiot, with no way of getting BACK!" she said right into his ear as he winced at the pain. She straitened up and though, pacing. Ok so they had traveled back into the past. Good news, her time travel device worked. Bad news, they where now stuck in the past until she could find a way to either build a new time travel device, highly unlikely, or charge her current one and reconfigure it to go back to the time they left. But where could she get that power?
As she was pacing, a bus stopped on the street with a picture of the Stark Expo and its opening date. She looked at it and then thought about when the Stark Expo first opened and what happened during that time.
"Excuse me?! Could you tell me today's date?" she asked a woman waiting next to the bus stop.
"Yes, it's April 28th. The Stark Expo opens today. Did you lose track of time?" the woman asked.
"In a way yes. Everything happened all at once." Alisha said, taking a deep breath to calm herself.
"I know the feeling. Well if that's all, good luck with what you are doing" And the woman got on the bus that had the Stark Expo advertisement on it.
Alisha walked back to Tyler, who was rubbing his side profusely. "So what are we going to do?" he asked.
"YOU are going to shut up and let me think" She said pointing her piercing green blue eyes at him then continuing to pace and think. So this is the time when her father was having trouble with the palladium in his reactor. He was going to give his business to her Mother tomorrow and her Mother would need an assistant. She could ask for that job and also be able to get into Stark Industries to fix her bracelet. The problem was finding a power source she could use to power it up. She thought of everything besides her father's arc reactor but couldn't come up with anything powerful enough. She would have to get close to her father in this time to get some power. "Ok I have it. It's a stretch, but meh." She said shrugging her shoulders.
"What is it?" Tyler asked, fallowing her out of the ally.
"First, we need money. I can get that by selling my necklace." She said, taking off the necklace with the emerald on it that Thor had made for her.
"No Alisha that was a gift."
"We don't have any other choice Tyler. I really don't want to but I have to." She said regretfully and headed to the nearest jewelry story to sell it. She came back out 30 minutes later with $5,000 in her pocket. She first needed a laptop to hack into the records and create an alias as well as a spotless background and references that she had been with for volunteering and other jobs and currently graduated from college on running start in business management, over 21 years of age. She also needed the laptop to fill out an application. She then needed new clothes for her interview and while she was working there. Once she had finished that she had $2,000 left over for apartment and food. They also bought prepaid cell phones for the reference calls.
They decided to live in the same one bedroom apartment. She would have the bedroom, and he would have the couch. Luckily the room was already furnished. A month cost about $1,600 in the apartment but she was close to Stark Industry main building and if she needed it, she could hitch a ride from there.
The next day, she looked up on the Stark Industry website about job openings and saw the prerequisites and added them into her alias. She then filled out an application and sent in a picture of herself. "Ok, application sent. If we get a call here it's the interview. If we get a call on any of the three cell phones they are for references. I have each phone on a piece of paper describing who it is and what I worked there for. Just tell her I was a good worker." She said.
The day went by and all three cell phones got a call from Pepper herself. At the end of the day around 5pm the apartment got a call. She had an interview with Pepper the next day at the Malibu mansion at 10am. She said there will be a ride to pick her up at 9:30 and would depart with or without her at 9:35.
"Ok looks like things are going according to plan" Alisha said after she hung up.
Tyler smiled at her, placing an ice pack on his side. Alisha winced. "Does it hurt that bad?"
"You got me pretty good. I am bruising. But besides that, it's time to celebrate" He said pulling out some black liquorish rum and root beer.
"Tyler, you know we can't drink" Alisha sighed.
"Well back home, no, but here why not? Come on. Just one drink?" He smiled.
"Ok, one drink. To celebrate" She said with a smile.
He took two shot glasses out of a shelf, pored the dark liquid into it and then into a larger glass. Dumped some root beer in it and handed one to Alisha. "To the distant future!"
"To the future" she smiled and took a gulp. She could taste the rum, it tasted nice going down her throat.
"I also have something else for you" He said with a smile. He then opened the oven and pulled out some lasagna.
"Tyler?! Did you make that?"
"Not really, it's not my Mom's. It came out of a box. But I did add a few of my own things to it. It kinda feels like we are on our own now." He said, cutting up a piece and placing some bread on a plate.
"Um, Tyler, we are on our own. And if I don't get this job I don't know how we are going to get back" She sighed sitting down on the couch in a huff. Her backpack was hanging up on a hook on the wall. She had also made her serum all that afternoon while waiting for the phone calls and had swiped some needles from a narcotic dealer from the streets. She soaked them in liquor to disinfect them before putting her serum in the 4 she had gotten. The rest of her serum was in a glass bottle in the fridge.
"Alisha, remember what I said to you before this happened?"
"Yah you where bugging me about my project. At least you know now." She said sarcastically, and then slumped back down.
Tyler took her plate over to her and sat down next to her on the two cosigned couch. "Yah no kidding but I was talking about before that. I said you needed to relax. Just be yourself and nothing can go wrong." He said, handing her the plate and placing their drinks on the coffee table.
"Yah you are right. And my Mom did mention a long time ago that she once had an assistant that she liked very much but was unfortunately not with her for very long." She said with a hopeful smile.
"That's the spirit, not let's eat. I am starving" He said as he chowed down. Alisha smiled and did the same.
Before she went to bed that night, she picked out a white blouse and a dark green pant suit with black heels for tomorrow's interview. She took her serum, took a shower to get her hair detangled, and then went to bed feeling refreshed and ready for tomorrow's interview.
I just had to put a Stan Lee cameo in there. I mean what is an avengers type of story without Stan Lee! *Bows to the creator of the marvel universe*. Soooooo, the part everyone has been waiting for since they read the first chapter is FINALLY HERE! Alisha is now in the past, with Tyler? Yes it's because of Tyler that she was in the past in the first place because he was being a bit of his old self. Apparently he doesn't like to be pointed at, go figure. But yes they are in the past, together. Wonder how they are going to do being together and living in practically the same room while they are trying to get back to the future. But untill the next chapter, you will just have to wait!
LOVE TO ALL