The Unknown Variable
(I fixed the mix up in chapters! didn't mean to re-post 7! thanks to Angel-Hime-Chan who caught the mistake!)
Hello people and other beings from earth and beyond, yes I am in a good mood thank you for asking,
Penny snaps, "We didn't ask!"
Cp rolls her eyes: "Oh be quiet, you're spoiling my mood!"
Penny huffs: "Good!"
Cp glares at her screen: "What's got your knickers in a twist?"
Penny: "You didn't write anything for my story in a week!"
*Blue portal opens up* Sophi: "She has barely written anything for me in two months!"
"This isn't your story so stay out of it!" Cp snaps at the intruder.
"Fine! I know when I'm not wanted!" *Sophi leaves through blue portal*
"Drama queen, the lot of you… since when do I create drama queens?" Cp asks.
"Since you're on a sugar high." Black cloaked girl states, leaning on the edge of the shadows.
"I am not!" Cp protests,
"Sure… that's why you're fighting with your own creations." Penny drawls.
Cp glares at both girls before saying to the black cloaked one "Do you have to corrupt all the newbies?"
"Yes, it's the only entertainment in here." Black cloak girl replies.
"Well get out of here… you don't even have a FanFic." Cp sighed, "This is going to go on for a while… I knew I shouldn't have eaten all of that sugar…
I do not own anything that JK and Disney have claimed only, I only own my own insane creations…"
Many cries of "Hey!" echoed through the air.
Tony and I had been working for hours, although we did stop and eat, by the time Yinsen got up. It had taken a while for the idiots that held us captive to get us everything we needed, but once we had most of it, we set to work.
Tony wasn't telling me what we were doing though. I knew that we weren't making the missile, for Tony would never let that happen, but I hadn't been included in the planning processes. I understood he didn't want anything to go wrong or for the idiots to find out the plan.
Night and day no longer held any sort of change to us in the caves. Bright lights were on when we worked, and off for the few random hours that we decided to rest. I ignored my aches and pains, and although I knew that working so hard wasn't good, I didn't care.
Tony was tinkering with a missile; I was standing behind him, out of view of the cameras. The small cube was once again in my fingers, and I just needed the perfect opportunity. Tony wasn't the only one who could come up with plans.
"How many languages do you speak?" Tony asked Yinsen randomly or seemingly randomly, but almost nothing is random with Tony… I learned that a while ago.
"A lot." Yinsen answered simply, watching Tony work with interest, not many people got to see Tony Stark in action.
Tony's eyes flickered to the older man for an instant before returning to his task.
"But apparently," Yinsen continued, "Not enough for this place. They speak Arabic, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, Mongolian, Farsi, Russian,"
Tony looked concentrated as he pulled the guts of the missile out, "Who are these people?" He asked putting the missile innards on the table.
"They are your loyal customers, sir." Yinsen replied and I couldn't help but wince, he wasn't going to like that… hell I didn't like that. "They call themselves the Ten Rings."
'Ah… so these idiots do have a name…' I thought to myself as I watched Tony. I had decided that insulting the captives was better than fearing them, and it kept the memories at bay.
I wondered how Yinsen hadn't noticed, or if he just didn't want to comment on how Tony was mostly only using one hand while the other was on his stomach. I sighed as I looked at the cube in my hand.
About an hour after Tony and I talked, more of the Ten Rings goons came in and grabbed Tony. I had flattened myself up against the wall, memories of the last time I saw them coursing through my mind. They hadn't noticed me.
Tony was pushed back into the cave about an hour or so later, but he wouldn't answer my question if he was alright or not; and I didn't push.
Now Tony favored his left arm, even though he was right handed, and he moved carefully, as if his midsection was in pain. I wished that I knew how to help.
I sat down on the floor practically under the table, grabbed the corners of the cube in my hands and pulled the corners apart.
They separated easily, a thin plastic sheet folding out between them; a second later I had my own personal tablet sitting in my hands.
The thin clear plastic screen dully glowed to life and small blue holograms danced across the screen. This was only a prototype, but I hoped to present this as my senior project to my electrical engineering and physics teachers.
I kept one ear on the conversation going on above me as I played around on the small hovering screen. Tony had his plan, and I was going to have my own.
Silence echoed through the cave for a while, my tablet was constructed for stealth, so the glow was extremely dull and it admitted almost no noise as it possessed. What I needed, was a way to better control my sparks, while my core stabilize them so they were controllable, I needed a way to use them in a tight situation.
"You know," I heard Yinsen say some time later. No one had noticed me for a while, and I wondered if this was natural or something to do with my sparks. "We might be more productive if you included me in the planning process."
"AH!" I hissed in pain as my core flared in my chest. I doubled over in agony, my brain freezing and my fists dropping my tablet that instantly shrunk back into the cube onto contact with the floor. As the pain flared all of my aches and pains that I had been ignoring also came rushing back to my attention; causing me to feel as if I had been run over by a truck and then fallen off of a forty story building.
I sat up as the pain dulled; the water must have damaged the core more than I thought, I would have to look at that… my breathing was labored as I saw Tony casting me a worried look.
'Where have you been?' He mouthed to me; he was kneeling on the floor working on something, I had been in his line of sight for a while now… but he only saw me once I was distracted. Was this something to do with my sparks?
'I've been right here.' I mouthed back, sitting up and brushing hair from my face.
Tony raised his eyebrow in a silent question but let it drop, he stood back up and pulled another missile's guts out. He was looking for something, that I was sure of.
I looked down at the miniaturized tablet sitting in front of me. My mind was running faster than you could comprehend as my eyes widened in realization.
If my sparks had evolved enough to create as shield, then they could also evolve to create a shield that shifted the light spectrum around an object.
I focused my gaze onto the cube as my hand alit with electricity. The normally blue bolts dulled to a pale white color as I focused my full attention on the cube.
My eyes twitched in strain and my chest ached, my damaged core struggling to obey my commands. A pale bolt of electricity jumped from my hand onto the dirt floor and the cube vanished from sight.
I gasped in shock and the cube reappeared. A large grin appeared on my face, now I have another trick up my sleeve.
I watched Tony pull a small bit of mettle out of the guts before tossing most of it away.
"What is that?" Yinsen asked Tony.
He was looked at the small bit of mettle with a peeved look on his face before looking up at Yinsen and holding up the scrap of mettle.
"That's palladium, 0.15 grams." Tony answered, his gaze focused on the small mettle bit. "We need at least 1.6, so why don't you two go break down the other 11?"
A wide smile appeared on my face, and my core problems left my mind, I had a feeling I knew exactly what Tony was doing… I had done it last year myself.
I helped gather the bits of palladium and watched as Yinsen melted them down. As he lifted the molten palladium out of the fire with tongs I was hovering by his side just in case.
"Careful," Tony said, hovering over Yinsen's other shoulder, "Careful, we only get one shot at this."
"Relax," Yinsen said, trying to reassure Tony, "I have steady hands."
I had to agree with this statement, watching him work on my father. I shuttered, pushing the bloody memories back, now wasn't the time.
"Why do you think you're still alive?" I glared at Yinsen at this comment as Tony swung the car battery onto the desk.
I watched with attention as Yinsen carefully poured the palladium into the red power.
"What do I call you?" Tony asked, watching Yinsen's actions just as intently.
I shot Tony a small smile, he must have decided to trust the elder man, for names aren't important to Tony unless you are; and nick-names showed the level of trust Tony held. Names meant were very important in the Stark world.
"My name is Yinsen." He replied as he finished pouring the liquid.
"Yinsen," Tony repeated, "Nice to meet you."
Yinsen shot Tony a bemused glance before smiling at me and saying, "Nice to meet you too."
The melted palladium had given me an idea. Palladium had the potential to generate and hold a lot of power, and I was surprised I had forgotten about the mettle that I owed my life to.
I had slid back into my invisibility, which I had discovered was actually a this electrical field that surrounded the object, or me, and bent the light around me, fading me from view. That was my theory anyway, and my theories were usually correct.
I had pulled another 2.7 grams of palladium out of every missile that I could find, it wasn't much, but it would suffice, for now.
Now I hovered over Tony's shoulder, Yinsen on the other side of my father, we watched as Tony pulled a ring of hardened Palladium out of the compacted powder, before placing it on a disk in his hand.
I had become Tony's second set of hands, we worked together, even though Tony never verbally told me what we were constructing, I had recognized the design immediately. Tony had looked at me in confusion at how I always had what he needed next in my hand. It had become a habit when we were working in his lab back in Malibu, but here, as far as he knew, I hadn't a clue as to what he was doing.
I watched with a small as the mini Arc Reactor flickered to life, casting the pale blue light around the cave.
Tony looked at the small power source with a strange look on his face, and I knew that he was thinking something along the lines of, 'this will be keeping me alive for the unforeseeable future,' and probably many other things I couldn't hope to comprehend.
Yinsen appeared next to me, and gazed at the small light in wonder and confusion. "That doesn't look like a Jericho missile." Yinsen commented his eyebrows knitted in confusion.
"That's because," Tony stated, "it's a miniaturized Arc Reactor." I nodded as Yinsen glanced at me with a contemplative look, and I knew he was remembering my hesitation during Tony's operation.
"I got a big one powering my factory at home." Tony continued "It should keep the shrapnel out of my heart."
I snorted, there was no 'should' when Tony Stark is involved.
"But what could it generate?" Yinsen asked him.
"If my math is right," Tony stated, "and it always is," Before Tony could answer I interrupted.
"At the current palladium core size, it'll generate three gigajoules per second." I finished for him; he shot me a strange, slightly annoyed look which I just smiled at in return.
"That could run your heart for fifty lifetimes." Yinsen said flabbergasted.
"Yeah, or something big for fifteen minutes." Tony said, and at that, I knew he was going to share the game plan.
"It does have many uses." I agreed, thinking about my own core.
That's where I'm cutting it off, just because it is already six pages and I am deliberately keeping these updates short.
You all are making me so happy! Soooo many people fav and following! I am glad you all are enjoying it.
For those of you who are anxious about the Hp factor… well… I know you'll hate me for saying this but you'll see.A
Thanks to my Beta, Expecto Prongs,
Hope you all enjoyed it,
Cp