Arc Reactor 2.0
Stark Industries! I’ve got one recommendation! Ready? Ready? Abandon ship! Does the Hindenburg ring any bells?
Pepper sighs as she watches the trashy program.
“Why are you even watching that?” Tony asked.
“I needed to see how people were reacting to the new and surprising change in direction.” Pepper said. “Clearly, it wasn’t going over too well.”
Let me show you the new Stark Industries business plan!
She winces as the guy smashes a cup.
Look, that’s a weapons company that doesn’t make weapons!
“He does have a point there.” Rocket said.
“Pepper. How big are your hands?” Comes Tony’s voice over the intercom.
“Is that a normal question?” Thor asked.
“No. It’s not.” Steve said.
“Well, after years of working for Tony, he’s asked some pretty weird stuff.” Pepper sighed.
“What?” Pepper asks incredulously, muting the program.
“How big are your hands?”
“I don’t understands why…”
“Get down here. I need you.”
“Tony, this is bordering on unprofessionalism.” Sam warned.
“It’s not what you think, trust me.” Tony promised.
Pepper enters the lab suspiciously until she sees Tony lying on what looks like a dentist’s chair, with a heart monitor beeping in the background and a new arc reactor in his hand matching the one in his chest.
Bruce spluttered. “You’re doing heart surgery on yourself? In your lab?? With no medical help???”
“How are you not dead yet?” Strange demanded.
“Hey! I knew what I was doing.” Tony raised his hands in defence. “It was perfectly safe.”
“It was not perfectly safe.” Pepper said exasperated at the memory.
“It all turned out fine.”
“You know that’s not true!”
“Hey.” Tony says from the chair. “Let’s see them. Show me your hands.”
Pepper raises her hands to him as she approaches.
“Ah yes, they are small. Very petit.” Tony comments. “I just need your help for a sec.”
“Oh my God, is that the thing that’s keeping you alive?” Pepper breaths as she reaches him.
“It was. It is now an antique.” Tony says. “This is what will be keeping me alive for the foreseeable future.” Tony holds up the new reactor in his hand.
“You just keep busting them out, don’t you?” Peter said. “It’s almost like it isn’t a nearly impossible to synthesise invention.”
“Once you know how to build one, it’s fairly easy to make another.” Tony shrugged.
“I’m swapping it out for an upgraded unit and I just ran into a little speed bump.”
“Speed bump? What does that mean?”
“It’s nothing. It’s just a little snag.” Tony dismisses. “There’s an exposed wire under this device and it’s contacting the socket wall and causing a little bit of a short.”
“That is not ‘nothing’, Stark.” Shuri said seriously.
He twists and lifts the old reactor, snapping it’s connection to the wires beneath it.
“What do you want me to do?” Pepper pulls away from the reactor and Tony hands it to her.
“Put that on the table over there. That is irrelevant.”
“Yeah! Just call an energy source that can power twenty sonic blasters at once, irrelevant.” Rocket said sarcastically.
“Oh my God!” Pepper places it behind her.
“I just want you to reach in and you’re just gonna gently lift the wire out.”
“Is it safe?”
“Yeah, it should be fine. It’s like Operation. You just don’t let it touch the socket wall or it goes ‘beep’.”
“God Tony, that does not sound safe.” Steve exclaimed.
Pepper panics. “What’s ‘Operation’… What do you mean, ‘Operation’?”
“It’s just a game, never mind.” Tony dismisses.
“You’re making me feel stressed and I’m not even there.” Scott said.
“Just gently lift the wire. Okay? Great.”
“Okay.” Pepper begins to lower her hand into his chest before hissing and pulling back. “You know, I don’t think that I’m qualified to do this.”
“No. No you’re not.” Strange said.
“No, you’re fine. You’re the most capable, qualified, trustworthy person I’ve ever met. You’re gonna do great.”
They share a brief moment of eye contact.
Fury pointed to the screen. “See what I mean?”
“Is it too much of a problem to ask? Cause I’m… I really need your help here.”
“Okay, okay.” Pepper sighs.
“How can you ask her to do that, Tony?” Steve said.
Pepper takes a deep breath and nervously lowers her hand. “Oh, there’s pus!” She squeals.
“It’s not pus. It’s an inorganic plasmic discharge from the device, not from my body.”
“It smells!” She cringes.
“Yeah, it does.” Tony encourages.
“Oh that’s gross.” Peter cringed.
“The copper wire.” He instructs. “The copper wire, you got it?”
“Okay.” Pepper says. “I got it! I got it!”
“Okay. Now don’t let it touch the…” There’s an aggressive buzzing and Tony gasps out a yell. “…sides when you’re coming out!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Pepper whispers, pulling out a long string of wire.
“And that’s why you should get someone qualified.” Strange muttered.
“Did it really hurt?” Pepper asked.
“No, not at all. You did great.” Tony put on a fake smile.
Pepper raised an eyebrow, not buying it.
“Okay, now make sure that when you pull it out, you don’t…” She pulls out a magnet. “…there’s a magnet at the end of it!” Tony gasps again.
“That was it.” Rapid beeping in the background. “You just pulled it out. Oh God! I was not expecting…”
“Well, you hardly explained it to her!” Shuri exclaimed.
“Yeah that would have been helpful to know before hand.” Pepper admitted.
Tony winced. “Sorry.”
Pepper panics, attempting to put the magnet back in.
“Don’t put it back in!”
“What do I do?”
“Don’t put it back in!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I’m just going into cardiac arrest cause you yanked it out like a trout…”
“Cardiac arrest!” Strange almost shouts. “That is not ‘nothing’, Stark! You need an actual doctor there, not your assistant. No offence, Miss Potts.”
“No, you’re exactly right.” Pepper said, with a glare at Tony.
“What? I thought you said this was safe!” Pepper yelps.
“Exactly!” Most of the audience groaned.
“We gotta hurry, here take this.” He says handing her the new reactor. “You gotta switch it out really quick.”
“Okay. Okay.” Pepper tries to get her breathing under control.
She’s about to put it back in, before she switches to consoling Tony “Tony? It’s going to be okay.”
“Why are you wasting time, Pepper? Put it in!” Happy exclaimed.
“I’m sorry, I was panicking!” Pepper exclaimed back.
“Is it?” He says impatiently.
“It’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna make this okay.”
“Let’s hope.”
“Just put it in, hurry up!” Sam yelled.
Pepper starts to put the reactor in while Tony guides her.
“Okay, you’re gonna attach that to the base plate. Make sure you…”
There’s a zap and Tony cries out, making Pepper jump back.
“What that so hard?” Tony says casually. “That was fun, right? Here, I got it.” He says adjusting the arc reactor.
Steve threw up his hands exasperated. “Tony, you are so predictable. Can’t you take anything seriously?”
Pepper steps back breathing heavily from the adrenaline, her hands dripping with that gross plasmic discharge.
“Are you okay?” She breaths out.
“Yeah, I feel great. You okay?” He starts laughing.
“How can you be laughing!” Scott exclaimed.
“Only you! Only you could laugh after something like that!” Happy sighed, rubbing a stressed hand down his face.
“It’s the adrenaline.” Natasha said.
Tony pouted. “I laugh when I’m stressed.”
“It’s okay dear, I know.” Pepper patted his shoulder.
Pepper is not impressed but smiles. “Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever ask me to do anything like that ever again.”
“I don’t have anyone but you.”
They share a moment of eye contact.
“What do I keep telling ya.” Fury said. “They should just get married already.”
“Still no reason for him to assume I can perform a heart transplant.” Pepper dead panned.
“You were simply just switching out one core for another, it’s not a literal heart transplant.” Tony said.
“That machine is basically your heart.” Pepper said.
Tony smirks. “Anyway.” He jumps off from the table.
“What do you want me to do with this?” Pepper asks, holding out the old arc reactor.
“That?” Tony eyes it. “Destroy it. Incinerate it.”
“No! Don’t do that!” Rocket exclaimed. “Let me have it!”
“For the last time, no one is letting you get your hands on one of those cores!” Gamora scolded.
“You don’t want to keep it?”
“Pepper, I’ve been called many things, ‘Nostalgic’ is not one of them.”
Pepper looks down, disappointed. “Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”
“That will be all, Miss Potts.”
Tony turns his attention back to his robots as Pepper walks away.
Clint sighed. “You can say how much they love each other all you want, Fury, but he needs to show a bit more appreciation for her if he wants to get anywhere.”
“Yes, exactly. Thank you, Clint” Pepper agreed enthusiastically, whilst giving a Tony a wink.
“What’s all this stuff doing on top of my desk? That’s my phone. That’s a picture of me and my dad. In the garbage. All that stuff.”
Tony turns, just to see Pepper leave, tapping his arc reactor subconsciously.
“See, you can tell he’s nervous.” Natasha said.
“What? How can you tell that?” Tony asked incredulously.
“You tap your arc reactor when you’re nervous. It’s one of your tells.”
Cut to the airbase, where Rhodey leads a group of young pilots.
“The future of air combat. Is it manned or unmanned. I tell you in my experience, no unmanned aerial vehicle will ever trump a pilot’s instinct, his insight, that ability to look into a situation beyond the obvious and discern its outcome, or a pilot’s judgement.”
“That’s true.” Sam agreed. “Robots have nothing on human instinct.”
“Exactly. Remember how Ultron turned out.” Steve muttered.
“Colonel?” Tony’s voice enters followed by his body. “Why not a pilot without the plane?”
“Way to be subtle, Tony.” Natasha smirked.
“Look who fell out of the sky. Mr Tony Stark.” Rhodey announces.
Tony goes to shake hands with the pilots. “Speaking of manned or unmanned, you gotta get him to tell you about the time he guessed wrong at spring break. Just remember that, spring break, 1987. That lovely lady you woke up with.”
“Don’t do that!” Rhodey reprimands. “Don’t do that. They’ll believe it. Don’t do that.”
“Give us a couple minutes, you guys.” He dismisses the pilots.
“I’m surprised.” Rhodey says. “I swear, I didn’t expect to see you walking around so soon.”
“Really? You bought all that about Tony having PTSD?” Natasha asked.
“Well, it made sense. Anyone would be shaken after what he’d been through.” Rhodey defended.
“But you know they were only saying that to undermine him, right?”
“I know that now, but at that point, it made sense.”
“I’m doing a little better than walking.” Tony says.
“Really?” Rhodey asks sceptically, crossing his arms.
“Yeah. Rhodey, I’m working on something big. I came to talk to you. I want to to be a part of it.”
“You really considered Rhodey to pilot the iron man suit?” Steve asked.
Tony shrugged. “Sure. He was my friend and I trusted him. Plus he was a trained pilot, it made sense. It’s unfortunate that he wanted nothing to do with it.” He winked at Rhodey who rolled his eyes.
Sam chuckled. “Who knew that if you’d heard him out then you could have been Iron Man.”
Rhodey chuckles. “You’re about to make a whole lot of people around here real happy, cause that little stunt at the press conference, that was a doozy.”
Tony stammers. “This is not for the military. I’m not… it’s different.”
“What? You’re a humanitarian now or something?” Rhodey mocks.
“You’re really making it hard for him to be a better person.” Natasha commented.
Rhodey sighed. “I know and I’m sorry. But I was so used to the old Tony. This new Tony just seemed a little weird to me.”
“I need you to listen to me.”
“No.” Rhodey interrupts. “What you need is time to get your mind right.”
“Oof, way to be an asshole, Rhodes.” Tony joked, trying to relieve some of the tension.
“I am sorry, Tony.” Rhodey said. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you were crazy.”
“Nah, it’s fine man.” Tony reassured him. “If I was so used to witnessing my narcissistic ways, I wouldn’t believe me either.”
Tony gives a forced smile.
“I’m serious.” Rhodey insists.
“Okay.” Tony sighs.
Rhodey backs away. “It’s nice seeing you, Tony.” He says coldly.
“Thanks…” Ton mutters.
“You could have tried being less cold.” T’Challa scolded.
“Guys, calm down, it was fair.” Tony said. “I still hadn’t apologised for how I’d acted before and he didn’t know how I’d changed. I deserved it.”
“I’m still sorry.” Rhodey said.
Tony shrugged. “I guess, that just meant I got to be Iron Man instead then.” He smirked.