Chapter 8

"Tony, are you sure about this? I don't think that-"

"Who is the super genius here?" he interrupted. JC had been over for several hours, helping him with the boots and finding some way to comment on everything. Now she was trying to convince him he had something wrong with power output for the boots.

"In your own little world, that would be you, but in the real world, not so much. Those boosters are meant for missiles several times your size that are supposed to fly long distances. Don't you think they're a little much to test in the garage?" she questioned.

"Have you ever been an expert with missiles, aeronautics, or anything else pertaining to this test?" he asked.

She crossed her arms and said with a huff, "Maybe not an expert, but it doesn't-"

"There you go. Let's just continue. Roll cameras. Dummy is on fire safety in case something goes wrong."

"Because he was working so well with the soldering," she muttered.

"That was Butterfingers, not Dummy," he corrected.

"Like you can honestly tell the difference."

"First, yes, I can. Second, you are being a distraction."

"I'm sorry. Would you like me to leave you alone with your robots so that after you break your neck they can stand there and not call 911?"

He gave her an indignant stare to which she just cocked her brow. She might have had a point, but he wasn't just going to concede…completely.

"I'm not going to set them to full power. Okay? We're gonna start off nice and easy with ten percent," he said and looked to her for approval. She didn't say anything to the contrary, so he continued. "In three…two…one." He pressed the ignition button in his hand, and a split second later he was smashed against the roof and on the floor behind his tool chest.

"Tony!" JC yelped as Dummy began to extinguish him.

He gave a loud groan as his head began to throb from the force of his flight. "Tony, are you okay?" she asked as ran over to him. He tried to pull himself up into a sitting position, but she immediately stopped him by putting her hand on his chest. "Don't try to move yet. Does anything feel broken?"

"Just my pride," he groaned.

"Good. Now do you want to listen to me every once in a while?" she asked as she helped him up.

"Okay, so I should have listened that time, but how was I supposed to know that would happen?" he admitted.

"You're the genius here. It doesn't take an expert to figure out weight to power ratios for actual flight, but when you factor in testing space, ten percent sends you through the roof. Or at least attempt to break your neck in the process. I did try to warn you not to do it in the garage," she explained.

He glared at her knowing he should have thought of that but not wanting to admit it. "Fine. Next time we take it down. And you," he declared pointing a finger at Dummy, "don't douse me when I'm not on fire."

The robot gave a low whine and lowered itself like a dog trying to lower its head when it knows it in trouble. "Let's go back to the drawing board, but first I need something from you."

"Let me guess: Tylenol or ice pack?" she answered.

"Both, and help me got out of these things," he said and began to take off the boots.

She helped him remove the bulky items before going upstairs to get his Tylenol while he went to figure out another problem with the flight. JC had been right about too much power for their small testing space, but something else hadn't felt right while he was hurtling through the air. It felt unstable, like he was going to fall over even on a lower setting.

"What to do, what to do," he mused to himself. He pulled up the schematics for the armor and gave it a look over. There wasn't much he could do to the boots from their current position. They had already been made as small and compact as possible from their original design, but there wasn't much that could be added to make them anymore stable.

"Here you go," JC said, handing him the pain reliever and set a cup of coffee on the table next to him before handing over the ice pack.

"Thanks," he said, and downed the pills, pressing the pack against his sore shoulders.

"You look confused. What's wrong?" she asked as she leaned against one of the counters.

"I'm at a loss. I don't know what to change or add on to make it easier to control. It was like when I was flying in the desert. It was all up until I started falling. There must be something I'm missing," he pondered as he stared at the digital drawing.

"Well, how are you wanting to fly?"

"Excuse me?" he questioned.

"Are you trying to fly like a missile or a plane?"

It took him a moment to comprehend just what she was saying. So maybe he had been an idiot when he said she knew nothing of aeronautics. Missiles were designed to go far by shooting up to high altitudes and then falling to reach their destination. The higher you went, the farther you could go. The landing also came faster and harder. So far, that's how he had been flying.

"So, essentially, you're suggesting I build a squirrel suit and stick a tail fin on my butt?"

She let out a chuckle. "It's called a stabilizer, not a tail fin. But, hey, you're the genius. What do I know about aeronautics or anything else pertaining to this part of the project?"

He gave a conceding look before turning back to his monitors. The last thing he wanted was anything that looked like those ridiculous suits. The only problem was he couldn't change the physics of flight. Planes were modeled after birds and missiles after bullets. He needed the bird for his purposes, not the bullet. What to do, what to…

"Stabilizer," he mused. Of course! It was so simple!

"What?" JC asked.

"A stabilizer," he repeated, typing in commands as fast as his fingers could go.

"You've lost me, Tony. What are you talking about?"

"It needs stabilizers," he said. "The Jericho missile uses repulsor stabilizer technology. Those repulsors are just small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. If I use those, that should solve my problems."

"So, you're basically going to put boosters on your hands and hope that they keep you stable. Sounds like a great plan," she said sarcastically.

"Why don't you go sit somewhere and watch TV? This is very precise stuff I'm working with."

He was suddenly ripped away from his desk, his chair spun around to come face-to-face with a snarling JC. "Tony," she said in a low voice. "I did not come here to sit and watch TV. I did not ask for charity. If that's what you brought me here for-"

"No," he interrupted knowing where this was headed. "I didn't ask you here for that, but for this part, I work alone. It's all equations and schematics and a bunch of other stuff that doesn't make sense to anyone but me. I swear I didn't bring you here just to sit and watch. You know me better than that."

"Do I?"

Tony raked his fingers through his hair trying to find the right way to explain it to her. "Look, when you're in the middle of a fight, you make calculations. I don't try to help you do them, do I?"

"You've tried. At the very least, ruined them," she pointed out.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His inadvertent meddling had gotten her injured and almost killed in Japan. So it wasn't the best analogy he could have used, but it was the only one he knew of that she would understand. "That's because I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to think like you. It's the same thing here. "

"So what you're saying is that I'm a stupid impediment. Why ask me here at all then?"

He let out a sigh of defeat before raising his hands in surrender. "Fine, you win. Grab a keyboard and get cracking if you must."

She gave him a final glare before letting him turn back to his station. He waited patiently for her to pull up a chair at the station beside him, but instead he heard the door to the workshop open and close and turned to watch her heading up the stairs. Completely baffled he abandoned his computer and chased after her.

"Where are you going?" he called after her.

She stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to him. "I'm late to pick up Darren. I'll be back after that," she explained.

"Hold on. If you were just going to leave, why did you pitch such a fit? I don't get it."

"You just proved a point that I've been trying to make for the past year, almost year and a half now," she said smugly.

"And that would be what, exactly?"

"How many times did you doubt or question what I did, the way I chose to handle things when I was on the job?"

He bit back at his temper as he started to realize just where she was going, and it wasn't somewhere that he liked. "Your point?" he ground out.

She gave him a condescending glare before saying, "I'm going to leave you to do your thing for a little while. Tell me how far you get without someone to meddle in your business," and then left.

He wanted to chase after to her, but it was useless. She had made her point, and he hated it. His temper finally getting the better of him, he lashed out and hit the wall with one fist.

"Tony?"

He looked up to see Pepper at the top of the stairs, worry etched on her features.

"Yeah?"

"Is everything okay? I heard crashing down there," she asked, obviously trying to avoid what she really wanted to ask.

"It's fine. Just a slight miscalculation was all. It's nothing you need to worry about," he tried to placate her.

"Are you sure?"

He knew what she really meant, but there was no way he was going to talk with her about it. She knew a lot of things about him, a lot of them not so nice things, but this was something he was sure he would never be able to tell her. He cared about her too much, needed her too much to risk alienating her in such a way.

"Everything's fine, Pepper. Just…creative differences," he lied.

"All right then," she said, not sounding 100% convinced. "I left something at the office. Do you need anything while I'm out?"

"I'm good. Have fun," he said light heartedly, hoping to dissuade any worry she still had.

"Just be careful, and don't do anything stupid before one of us gets back."

"Yes, mother," he threw over his shoulder as he went back to the lab. She never used to worry so much about what he did on his own time. He supposed he might react in a similar way if she had been a terrorist captive and came home acting what was now being considered abnormal.

He sat down to his computer and started plugging in data for the new suit design as he started thinking about JC. They were never going to get anywhere if she was going to continue bringing up the past. He had to admit that he expected something like this to happen, maybe even hoped for it. He knew he deserved to be chewed out for what happened, but he also wanted to take this chance to put the past behind them and start over. If this new project was going to work, he couldn't do it alone, and she was the only one who would ever understand the reason for it. She was the only one he could turn to without being told he was insane. She was his only hope for redemption.


Several days later one stabilizer had been finished and was ready to be tested. JC watched as Tony attached the metal frame to his arm and she helped secure it there. The whole time music blared, so neither heard when Pepper walked in.

"I've been buzzing. Haven't you heard?" she asked as she came up to them, a package wrapped in brown paper and a mug of coffee in one hand. "Obadiah is here," she reported.

"What?" he said distractedly. "Yeah, I'll be up in a minute," he said, lifting the device from its stand.

"I thought you were done making weapons?" Pepper noted a she eyed the stabilizer.

"He is. It's a flight stabilizer," JC informed her.

"See?" he said as he pressed the power button. "It's perfectly harmless." He held up his arm and fired the stabilizer. JC and Pepper ducked as tools and monitors went flying while Tony was thrust backwards, crashing through more tools as he hit the ground.

"I didn't expect that," Tony groaned from his spot on the floor.

"Well, when you two are done having fun with your…harmless stabilizer, Obadiah needs a word," Pepper said skeptically before going back upstairs.

"You okay?" JC asked, looking down at his crumpled form, lending out a hand.

"Just perfect," he said sarcastically as he picked himself up and set the device back in its holder.

"Well, I had better get home, and you should get upstairs before both Pepper and Mr. Stane come down here looking for you," she said as she freed him from the device.

"Why don't you stick around for a little while longer? Stane should only take, like, two minutes, and I want to try the stabilizers with the boots," he begged with puppy dog eyes.

She eyed him strangely before cocking her brow and conceding. "All right, Tony. I guess I'll stick around for a little while longer. It's a weekend, so it'll be okay if I get back late," she said, and ushered him upstairs.

"Great! I'll just get rid of Stane, and we can get back to work," he said excitedly and ran up the stairs two at a time. As they rounded the corner, the sound of the grand piano could be heard playing a somber tune.

"How was it?" Tony asked as he eyed a box of pizza. No answer came. "That bad, huh?" he said, and helped himself to the pizza.

"Just because I brought back pizza from New York doesn't mean it went bad," Stane said, continuing his music.

"Sure it doesn't," Tony said disbelievingly as he bit into a slice. He held up the box as an invitation for JC, but she shook her head and chose to lean against the wall near the stairs.

"It would have gone better if you had been there," Stane commented as he came over to the table and sat down next to Tony.

"Nope. You told me to lie low, so I'm lying low."

"Yeah, in public, the press. This was a Board of Director's meeting."

"This was a Board of Directors meeting?" Tony asked in feign shock. Stane rolled his eyes at him as Tony looked at him skeptically, wondering what had gone wrong.

"Tony, this really isn't a conversation for everyone," Stane said sparing a glance over at JC. Tony gave him a disapproving glare and was about to say something when JC spoke up.

"It's cool. I've gotta go clean up your mess down there anyways," JC said graciously, and went back downstairs.

"That was subtle," Tony said half disgustedly to Stane.

"Tony, she's not your business partner. She's not your P.A. She's your bodyguard, and it's none of her business about what goes on with the company," Stane said.

"Obi, half the country already knows about what's going on with the company. What's one more? And she's not just my bodyguard. She happens to be a good friend."

"Calm down, Tony. There are more important matters at hand. The board is claiming posttraumatic stress. They're filing an injunction."

"What?" Tony exclaimed.

"They want to lock you out," Stane finished.

"Why? Because the stocks dropped forty points? We knew that was going to happen," Tony pointed out.

"Fifty six and a half," Pepper corrected from her spot on the couch.

"It doesn't matter!" Tony exclaimed. "We own the controlling interests."

"Tony, the board has rights, too. They think that you and your new direction are not in the company's best interest," Obadiah explained.

"I'm being responsible. That's a new direction for me? I mean me on my company's behalf. This is crazy," he fumed and headed for the stairs. It was insane was what is was. He was trying to turn his life around, to make things better. What was the big problem with that? What was so wrong about leaving a better legacy than death? Maybe that wouldn't bring in huge profits in the short run, but for the long haul, it would be astronomical! Why couldn't anyone else see that?

"Tony," Obadiah called.

"Good night, Obi," Tony snapped over his shoulder, wishing nothing more than for him to disappear.

As he re-entered the workshop, he found JC finishing picking up everything he had knocked over from the stabilizer test. "Hey," he greeted her.

"How did it go?" she asked.

"Not well. I'm sorry about Obi. You didn't have to-"

"Tony," she interrupted. "It's okay. It's not the first time I've been kicked out of a room. There are people with worse manners than Obadiah Stane. Now, what do you say we hurry up and get to that test with the boots?" she offered with a smile.

She was being too generous about the situation, but he wouldn't argue any further about it with her. Happy with the change of subject, Tony grabbed the boots and began to hook them up to his reactor.

"Hey, Tony, if this thing works and you actually get the whole suit to function properly, what are you going to do with it?" JC asked as she brought over the stabilizer pieces.

"I don't really know. I figured on finding out how my weapons ended up in terrorist hands and destroying them if I can," he answered.

She paused for a moment contemplating on his answer before speaking. "Just be careful with that. Sometimes taking things into your own hands can cause more harm than good."

He thought about her words as he continued to put the stabilizers on. Did he honestly think that what he was doing would make a difference? It had to count for something. With one less Iron Monger out there, maybe some good could come out of it. Maybe.

"All right, let's test this out," he said, moving into position. "Dummy is still on fire safety. If you douse me again and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to a city college," he said pointing a finger at the robot, which then lowered his nozzle like a berated dog. "Let's start it out nice and easy at one percent. In three…two…one."

His thrusters flared to life levitating him about two feet off the ground. "Tony, it works," JC breathed. "You did it."

Satisfied with the first part of the test, he killed power and dropped back down. Dummy promptly started following him with the nozzle just in case.

"Please don't follow me around with it either. I feel like I'm going to spontaneously combust. Just stand down and if something happens, then come in," he ordered the robot. JC stifled several chuckles. "Hey, it's not funny," he said pointing a finger at her.

"Of course not. It's perfectly natural to talk to your robots," she teased holding back several more giggles.

"Ha, ha, ha. You think you're so funny. Let's take it up a notch. Give me 2.5%," he said and kicked up the power. This time he went almost to the ceiling and hovered.

"Tony, be careful. You could break your neck if you fall from there," JC chided.

"I've done worse," he said and started moving his hands, testing out his range of motion. He began to move about the room going from one spot to the other before he eventually made it to his very expensive cars. "This is exactly where I don't want to be. Yikes!" he said as his thrusters moved over the cars. He moved away from the cars and began heading for his desk that had been covered with papers that were now flying about. He let out a grunt before putting his hands in front of him, sending him backwards. He let out a nervous noise before saying, "It could be worse. We're fine."

"Tony, maybe you should come down now before you ruin something," JC suggested nervously.

"Okay, I'm coming in," he said, hovering over the spot that he had taken off from. Slowly, he lowered himself before killing power and dropping to the floor. Dummy looked up for a moment, but was immediately reprimanded by his creator. Taking a look from Butterfingers, who had been filming, to JC, Tony confidently stated, "Yeah. I can fly."

"Congratulations," she said sounding only half sincere. "Now, let's call it a night," JC said with a small yawn.

"Don't you want to stick around for the big flight?"

She eyed him skeptically. "What big flight?"

"You can't honestly expect me to settle for that? We're this close to finishing the prototype," he pleaded, making a small space with his pointer finger and thumb.

"Tony, you could get yourself killed trying something like that. You nearly wrecked the shop," JC pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's like you said. This area is too small to test this thing out. I've gotta put it through its paces sooner or later, so why not sooner?"

JC took on a look of indecisiveness, considering whether or not she wanted to stick around for it. Tony truly hoped that she would. This was the big moment, and he wanted her, the one who had been crazy enough to help him, to be there to experience it with him. She looked up into his eyes and said, "As your bodyguard, I cannot let you do something so reckless as to risk your life with this experiment."

Tony's face fell at her answer. She could ground him if she truly wanted to. Tony had no doubt of that. "As your friend, though," she sighed, "I'm willing to make this one exception, if," she emphasized when she saw his face light up like a kid at Christmas. "If you promise not to do anything truly stupid. Are we agreed?" she offered.

"I promise," he answered quickly. "Thank you, JC," he said, and gave her a big hug.

"Tony," she wheezed. "You're cutting off my air supply."

"Oops, sorry," he apologized sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"I'm going to regret this," she muttered.


AN: Hope everyone is enjoying the updated story. Don't forget to leave a review!