No Second Guesses, No Regrets (A Captain America/Avengers Fan Fiction)

Chapter 24 - Prototypes

Stark's team had worked up copies of what Taryn had recovered, and created schematics for the parts she brought them. McKenna packaged them all and Stark took it to his lawyer's again, addressing it to Tony. Stark rode back to the office and he briefly entertained the idea of writing Tony a letter, but he thought better of it. By the time he got back to the office, his team had made a breakthrough with the schematics and were working on a prototype. Neither Taryn nor Steve were needed there, so they opted to stay at the penthouse. They hadn't been too comfortable to go out in public since Peggy and Taryn had been taken from the club.

The following day, Tony received another package at the tower. Hand delivered from a lawyers' office downtown. He accepted and signed for the fire box.

"What do you think is in it?" Pepper asked, sitting next to him on the couch.

"I've no idea. More surprises from the past, I'm guessing..." Tony opened the box with the key provided and found file folders, and a letter. Taking out the letter he read it aloud. Taryn had written it, explaining the contents of the box and where it had come from. Tony would have loved to have been there. He was fascinated by the schematics that his father's team had created. He needed to show these to Alphonse to see if they made any sense. He didn't have high hopes as Leo was a loon, but it was worth a shot.

Tony let the others know what he had received and his intentions. He also scanned the files into the mainframe and set to analyze them himself.

Taryn wandered around aimlessly throughout Howard's place. Ending up in the kitchen, she dug through the refrigerator to see what she could throw together for lunch, since Jarvis was at the office also.

"Oh, there you are," said Rogers entering the room.

"Hey. Care for a sandwich? I found some ham..."

"Sure." As they ate, the phone rang.

Taryn debated on answering it, but picked it up. "Stark residence."

"Taryn? It's Howard. The team has made a successful prototype!"

"How successful?"

"They sent something five minutes into the future! I've sent Jarvis to come and get you two."

She hung up. "That was Howard. He said they successfully tested a prototype."

"How successful?"

"Something about sending something into the future, and he sounded pretty excited about it. He's sending Jarvis over with the car."

Steve and Taryn rode over to Stark Enterprises and went immediately into the lab to see what had developed. Stark approached them grinning fiercely. He took Taryn's arm and pulled her over to a miniature version of the portal. Howard nodded to the engineer.

The engineer turned on a power source to the small pylons and a ring of electricity sparked to life. The engineer took a pocket watch, set the time to 10:05 and tossed it into the portal. Taryn watched the other side and nothing came out. The engineer explained to here that the portal was set to five minutes into the future. So she stood there and waited and when five minutes was up, the watch suddenly popped out of the other side and dropped on the table. The engineer picked it up and showed her the time. It was still reading 10:05 even though the current time was 10:10. Taryn held it up to her ear. It was still ticking.

Steve and Taryn watched a few more experiments as they pushed out the time span a little further each test. After a while, Howard asked them into his office to talk about the progress.

He sat down at his desk. "Now I know that the tests didn't show extreme time travel, but we're definitely on the right track."

"We can't thank you enough for working on this for us, Howard," said Taryn. "I know your engineers are working very hard on this."