Chapter Six

It seemed like they had been talking for only a short time with the three lovestruck idiots trying to get the bigger reaction out of Toni while she teased them and brought their sons into the conversation to make sure they didn't feel left out.

"Miss Stark?" Alfred spoke, causing Toni's laughter to trail off as she turned her head with a smile towards the elderly butler.

"Yes, Alfred?"

"I do hope you forgive me but I had some time on my hands and made some lunch and set the table."

Toni stood up and smiled softly at the older man. "You know that you are welcome to do so anytime, Alfred. It's too bad Bruce has kids or I would steal you away from him!"

"What does me having kids have to do with it?" Bruce asked as they all followed her into the dining room where an impressive spread for lunch had been placed.

His kids grinned as they watched their usually serious and emotionally stunted father respond to Toni. Tim still couldn't believe that Bruce had been best friends with The Toni Stark and never introduced them!

Oliver and Lex smirked and laughed at Toni targeting Bruce but all three friends were still concerned about what was glowing under her shirt earlier and just her in general. All three of her friends could tell that even as she talked and laughed, her mind was working on something completely different. After lunch, Toni's social meter was drained.

"So, not to be obviously rude, but how long are you all staying?" Toni asked as they had moved back into the living room. Her bodyguards had wandered elsewhere in the house, trusting JARVIS to alert them if anything happened.

"Aw, Toni, do you not want us here?" Oliver teased.

"I mean, if you want to stay, you are more than welcome to. I just have some things I'm working on right now and so won't be up here with you." Toni said, standing.

"We'll stay here for a couple days, if you don't mind. We'll make sure not to be in your way, though." Lex said softly, meeting her gaze. She smiled at him.

"Sounds great to me. JARVIS can direct you to wherever you want to go." Toni nodded her head to everyone then disappeared down a flight of stairs to the lower level where her lab was.

"Right, JARVIS, let's get to work. Did all the materials arrive?"

"I did not see any missing, Miss Stark," JARVIS said.

"Okay, let's get started."

A few hours later, the beginning of a boot was forming. Dummy was next to her, assisting. Well, assisting was generous.

"Next. Up. Not in the boot, Dummy." Toni said, pointing at a spot for the robot. "Right here. You got me? Stay put. Nice. You're of no benefit at all. Move down to the toe. I got this. Okay, I'm sorry, am I in your way? Up. Screw it. Don't even move. You are a tragedy."

The next day, since she pulled an all nighter, found her in the early morning with two boots on her feet for a test flight.

U is filming, while Dummy is in charge of the fire extinguisher.

"Okay, let's do this before the rest of the house wakes up," She knew she didn't have much time before they all began bustling upstairs. "Start mark, half a meter, and back and center. Dummy, look alive. You're on standby for fire safety. U, roll it." She took a deep breath. "Activate hand controls. We're gonna start off nice and easy. We're gonna see if 10% thrust capacity achieves lift. And three, two, one."

Toni immediately flings back and hits the upper wall. Not even a second went by and Dummy uses the fire extinguisher on her. She groaned as her body ached and her shoulder began to ache from hitting the wall. After catching her breath, she stood and removed the hand controls and boots and began working on flight stabilizers for his hand/arms. While she's doing that, Clyde came down and entered, staying back by the door as he could see she was deeply concentrated on what she was doing.

"Hey, Toni," he began.

"What's up, Clyde?"

"I think you might have muted JARVIS. Obadiah's at the gate and he is kind of demanding to be let in." Toni groaned at the thought of him.

She followed him out the lab, the windows immediately turning oblique as soon as the door shut instead of the customary clear. Toni came upstairs to see Bruce, Lex, Oliver, Alfred, the kids, and her guards all up and spread across the living room.

Bryan turned towards her as she entered. "Do you want to let Mr. Stane in?"

Toni glared slightly at the thought of Obadiah in her house. He had never been in her home in all the years since she had purchased it.

"I'll meet him outside. He is not allowed inside nor is welcome unsupervised passed the gate."

"You don't trust your CFO?" Lex asked her as Bryan and Robert moved outside to go let Obadiah in and make sure he stayed outside.

"I trust very few. But no, Obadiah only has his position because of my father. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have something to do." Heading outside, she was handed a cup of coffee at the last moment by Alfred which she took with a smile at him before her face went blank. The door gently closed behind her but she knew her other guards and at least her friends would be watching through the windows to see what happened.

"Obadiah, what a surprise to see you at my house." Toni said as he got out of his SUV and placed his hands on his hips with sunglasses on. "But how'd it go?"

"How'd what go?"

"The board meeting."

"How did you know there was a board meeting?" Obadiah asked, shocked, not understanding how she could know that.

"I might not be at the company, but I do still know what's going on… especially after I shut down a division of the company until further notice."

"I see. And you've been laying low while I've been cleaning up the mess you left behind, as usual."

Toni couldn't help her eyes rolling. "So, what did the board say?"

"The board is claiming you have post-traumatic stress. They're filing an injunction."

"So, they want to lock me out." Toni mused as she finished the rest of her coffee and crossed her arms, her mind racing. "Why, cause the stocks dipped 40 points? I knew that was most likely gonna happen."

"Fifty-six and a half."

"It doesn't matter. I own the controlling interest and know three others that own a good portion of the company as well." Toni said. The four friends each owned ten percent of each other's company just in case something happened. Also the fact that none of the three friends had received messages in regards to the meeting showed that it most likely wasn't a full board of directors meeting. So it was most likely those that Obadiah had under his control that would help keep him in power.

"Toni, the board has rights, too. They're making the case that you and your new direction isn't in the company's best interest."

"Then they need to remember that Stark is the name of the company," Toni said, with a pointed look that made Obadiah flush. "It's a new direction for me, for the company. I mean, me on the company's behalf being responsible for it and the future." She could see that he was going to say something in anger but then calmed himself.

"Hey, hey. Toni, listen. I'm trying to turn this thing around, but you gotta give me something. Something to pitch them." Then he said something that made Toni realize that Rhodey or the doctors from the initial rescue had let something slip. "Let me have the engineers analyze that," pointing exactly where the reactor was hidden beneath her clothes.

"Absolutely not. I don't know who told you, and honestly I couldn't care less. This one stays with me, it is not anything I will ever share with you or anyone else. I already have a patent on it, so don't bother arguing with me about it." Robert and Bryan noticed what Obadiah was referring to as well as Toni's response to it, making a signal to one of the guards inside.

"Miss Stark, there is a call for you," Jason said, poking his head out. Then made a sorry expression. "Oops, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were still talking. I can tell them to leave a message."

"No, no. I'll be right there. Have a good day, Mr. Stane. I'll send something out to my company once I have all the details on the new direction I want to lead it on." With a nod of her head, she turned her back without waiting for him to say a word and entered her house. Robert followed while Bryan stayed behind to make sure Obadiah left and the gate shut behind him.

It wasn't long before all were in the living room, eyeing Toni as she went over to her seldom used bar area and began to poor herself a drink.

"Hey Jason, Clyde," she began as she sat down on her chair and looked down at her drink in thought. Suspicion that she had pushed away before her abduction that was now brought back by her interaction with Stane.

"Yeah, Toni?" Clyde asked. She leaned back and drank the rest of her scotch without a wince, eyeing the two dangerous men. She didn't even care that her three friends and their children were sending her weird looks.

"How're your infiltration skills these days?" Toni sensed Bruce and his four tense at her words.

Jason and Clyde exchanged glances before looking back at their charge.

"Still as sharp as when you picked us up," Jason said.

Toni smiled at the two, causing chills to go down the spines of Oliver and his two sons while Lex watched interestingly. If anything, Bruce and his sons went even stiffer. Just then, Butterfingers beeped as he came up the stairs from the lab and over to Toni. Tim's tense form relaxed in awe at the technology of what was most likely one of Toni's first AI inventions. Butterfingers outstretched it's claw to Toni and placed whatever it had been holding into her hand.

"Thank you, Butterfingers," she told the bot softly to which it beeped quietly in return before it took the path back to the lab. She held up two flash drives and handed one of each to Jason and Clyde.

"What're those for?" Ray asked.

"Those aren't just any flash drives you can get at a store. They are each equipped with a program that won't leave any trace and will steal any and all information from the computer it is plugged in to."

"Why do you have that?" Roy asked, suspicious of his dad's friend.

"Eh, I wrote it after drinking too much at a party a few years ago. Figured I would make two copies of it for a rainy day. And look, it is pouring out!" She quipped, her friends not being able to stop the soft laughs at her last sentence.

"But it is cloudless and sunny," Damian protested, not understanding her statement at all, causing Dick to put his arm around him, telling him he would explain it to him later.

Toni shot Damian a slight glance but didn't comment. She could tell Damian wasn't stupid and was most likely raised strictly by his birth mother. "Anyway, Jason, Clyde, I want you to-"

"Break into Stane's office and clone his computer so you can have access to all of his files and essentially everything," Clyde concluded. She smirked at him.

"Yes, that is correct. I gave you each one just in case one of the flash drive's memory gets full. I don't remember how many bytes they carry. There isn't a rush on it. Plan it accordingly. Also, don't get caught." Toni said. Jason and Clyde huffed and rolled their eyes before they left, already discussing it between themselves. Toni then turned to her friends.

"Sorry you had to witness that but I figured since we are all friends here, you wouldn't mind hearing about a little espionage towards my own company."

"As far as I'm concerned, my friend," Lex said with a smirk, drinking his own scotch. "It's your company, do with it what you want."

"That is correct. When I came back from the island, it did take some adjusting but ultimately, you'll get back into it. Don't worry, it just takes time." Oliver said, Bruce nodding his head in agreement. Although all three of her friends desperately wanted their own copies of her program that she wrote for their own purposes, they all knew she wouldn't say anything. But Bruce couldn't stop from saying what was on his mind.

Although they couldn't hear much through the windows when Stane was here, he did see Stane gesture to Toni and her become almost angry at his words. He was very certain that it was whatever was glowing beneath her shirt.

"Stane knows what that glowing thing under your shirt is, doesn't he?" Bruce said, hitting a nerve as Toni had been thinking about that too. She snapped her head towards him, glaring at him. "Toni, look. I know your trust is small right now, so small in fact, you feel like you can count the number of people you can trust on one hand. Trust me, I get it. Oliver gets it. Even Lex gets it. And I know we all dropped the ball in keeping in contact over the years, believe me that will be something that I will regret for a long time. But you know us. The four of us have each others' backs regardless of whatever happens out there."

Toni's jaw clenched as she listened to Bruce's words. Then Toni did something that no one expected. She turned her attention right on to Jason.

"What do you think, Jason?" Jason's eyes widened in shock at being addressed, and his weren't the only ones widening.

"Why are you asking Jason?" Dick asked.

Toni shrugged. "Both Jason and Roy seem to be pretty straightforward and like they won't bullshit me when I ask them something… they also won't lie to me to make Oliver and Bruce happy. Plus, Jason was picked simply for the matter that Bruce was the one that was speaking. So, Jason, do you think I can trust Bruce? Can I add him to the list of my most trusted?" Toni asked, her intelligent brown eyes meeting his own blue with green pair.

Jason was silent for awhile, the two looking into each other's eyes. Jason couldn't help to admire and respect her. He had already respected her for putting up with Queen and Luthor throughout the years on top of Bruce's nonsense, but now she had raised herself in his eyes. She had already been above Talia, now she was tied with Selina in terms of the women Bruce brought into their lives.

"I might not get along with Bruce a majority of the time and I will admit, for a couple years trust between the two of us was minimal at best… however, I can count him in my top ten of people that I trust. Not top five, definitely, but maybe a solid eight." He said. Toni nodded at his words and took a breath as she thought, standing up and looking at ten of them in the room. Robert, Bryan, and Deckard had disappeared earlier, probably to go see what Clyde and Jason were cooking up.

Lex. Oliver. Roy. Ray. Bruce. Tim. Dick. Damian. Jason. Alfred.

"So, it seems that my trusted people are being increased from five, all the way to fifteen." She took a deep breath, then nodded to herself.

"Darling, you don't have to tell us if you aren't ready," Lex said softly, the softest any of the younger males in the room had ever heard come from him. Alfred, Bruce, and Oliver were used to hearing him being soft and kind to Toni.

"No, no. I want to tell you," took another deep breath. "So, when our convoy was hit, I found myself face to face with a missile, a JERICHO missile." Intakes of breath were heard as they all knew that it was one of Toni's weapons being used by the enemy. "It was a dud as it didn't go off as it should have when it landed next to me. The missile being a dud saved my life even as it eventually went off and I was blown back. I fully expected my life to end at that very moment, but it was not to be. The shrapnel from the missile pierced my chest and, luckily, unluckily, however way you look at it. The terrorists had a doctor whom was able to stop the shrapnel from entering into my heart by building a device… a device that I improved on."

Toni took off her t-shirt, showing off the tank top underneath. As well as the hole she had cut in to it, the reactor shining through.

"That looks like the arc reactor," Tim said immediately, causing Toni to beam at him.

"It is exactly that, Tim! I was able to improve on the doctor's invention and create an older version of this. Then once I got back I mad this new and improved version. It protects my heart, keeping the shrapnel that is still inside of me from piercing my heart." She rambled as Tim's eyes kept shining as his mind tried to figure out how she did it.

"Can you two dumb it down for the rest of us?" Roy asked, having noticed the three men were stiff, eyes drilling into the device that was keeping the woman they loved alive.

"So, Stark Industries has a larger version of that device. It is an alternate energy source that hasn't been explored too much as the arc reactor is too volatile. But Toni was able to recreate the technology in a cave and once more here, which is like, a significant break through in the energy field!" Tim rambled, Toni watching and listening with a soft smile.

"You know, Tim," Toni said, causing him to look at her. "If Bruce wouldn't object, and I would have to make it official for your resume, but I would love to host you for the summer as an intern, teach you a few things."

Tim whipped his head around to look at Bruce. "Bruce, please?" He begged.

Bruce jerked his racing thoughts away from the device to look at his son.

"We'll have to discuss the details, and like Toni said, make it official, but I don't see an issue with it."

Tim pumped his fist in silent victory before turning his eyes onto Toni. "Thank you, Toni! I promise I won't let you down."

She shook her head at his words. "Trust me, kiddo, with all the crap your dad, Oliver, and Lex have pulled throughout the years, there is nothing that you can do that would let me down."

The three men immediately protested, everyone in the noticing that she changed the subject and put her shirt back on, to move away from the arc reactor sitting in her chest.

"Toni, I can distinctly remember you and Jemma Adams getting into that huge fight during college!" Lex exclaimed.

Both Bruce and Olive also tried to get the attention off of them but none of the men could stop Toni from telling the six younger males in the room the embarrassing stories of their youth. But none of them could hide their smiles as they watched their best friend leave her painful memories behind and replace them with the stories and laughter of old.

Toni couldn't wait for all of them to fall asleep so she could finish her project downstairs. She also knew that she didn't want any of her friends or their kids to know about what she was working on, as she didn't want them to be in more danger than what they were with associating with her. Toni could only hope that she was wrong about Obadiah, as although she didn't like him, he was her father's best friend and her unwanted godfather.