Can't Handle This

“Does it usually take them this long?” Antoinette asked. She and Pepper were sitting at the kitchen counter with bottles of Coca Cola in hand.

Pepper shook her head. “No, not usually.” She said calmly. “But if it’s taking this long, it must be very important.”

Antoinette took a sip of her pop and sat in silence until Pepper’s cell went off. She placed it to her ear. Her voice was too low to hear, but her face told a story on its own. Pepper looked relieved, annoyed, and yet, slightly entertained. Then, her expression suddenly changed. “Will it be safe?” she asked. She listened intently. “Okay, yeah. We’ll be down there soon.” She set down her phone and looked over at Antoinette. “Tony wants us down in the lab.” She said with a small smile.

Antoinette paused, almost unable to wrap her head around it. “We can go to the lab? He’s actually letting me go into the lab?” She almost giggled, placing a delicate hand over her smiling lips. She jumped out of her seat and looked at Pepper. “Wait,” she said as her smile faded slightly. “You asked if it was safe. What happened?”

Pepper looked down at the tiled floor and sighed. When she looked back up at Antoinette, she was blushing slightly, as if the problem was her own. “Loki was being…mischievous,” She chuckled. “Again.”

Antoinette looked confused. “Loki? Who’s Loki?”

“He’s a…” Pepper thought about it for a little while before finally settling on a correct definition. “…friend.” A moment passed before Pepper set her bottle on the counter and stood. “Anyway, Tony wants to see you down there.”

Antoinette’s smile reappeared at the mention of the lab. “Yeah, of course!” She giggled slightly. “Please, lead the way!”

Pepper and Antoinette walked down the stairs and punched in the security code. To Antoinette, this place was a candy land. Tony Stark had all the bells and whistles. Every scientific toy possible and more! Despite the slight damage, the lab was beautiful.

Steve was talking to a younger man with a bow and quiver of arrows when they walked in. Now, he was walking over to Antoinette. “Glad you’re here,” he gestured to the man behind him. “This is Hawkeye, also known as Agent Clint Barton.”

The man with the arrows walked up to her and shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss.”

Antoinette blushed ever so slightly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”

“Her name is Antoinette,” Steve said. “She’s Tony’s daughter.”

“What about my daughter?” Tony called from the other end of the lab. He was wearing the ever famous Iron Man suit, though most of it was already off his body and on a long metal table. He looked at Antoinette and almost smiled. “Oh, you. Great. I want to show you something. Come here.”

She looked cautiously from Steve, to Clint, to Pepper, and then finally back to Tony. She made her way there carefully over the broken plaster from the walls. She looked at the corner of the room and saw a man with long black hair and green clothes sitting there looking slightly defeated and disheveled.

She finally reached Tony and looked him in the eye. He held her gaze for a second before dropping down to the table in front of him. “I wanted to show you my most recent project.” A robot took the last of his armor off him and he gestured to the open space in front of him. A screen popped up and showed everything from equations to diagrams. “It’s…well, I’m not sure what it is yet, but it was something I started working on at three this morning. I was hoping you might be able to help me along.” He paused only for a quick breath before continuing. “That is, if you’re into this kind of thing. I totally understand if you took after your mother. That’s…that’s fine.”

Antoinette studied the screen in front of her with a finger on her lips. She gestured to the screen and pulled off bits and pieces of the diagrams and made slightly adjustments to the equations without saying a word. She spun the 3D model around, making minute changes, and then expanded it to life size. In front of them was a brand new model of the Iron Man suit, looking back at them. “You could do a lot with it,” she said. “With some of the modifications I made, you could fly ten times as fast without having to drive all your power to the thrusters, have connections with JARVIS in some parts of space, and maybe even turn invisible with reflector panels.”

She looked at the audience around her. All of them had their mouths gaping open in shock, surprise, and amusement, except for Tony. He just looked proud. Then, he turned to Bruce and chuckled. “I think I found myself a new lab buddy.”