Iron Phoenix | Tony Stark x oc

Chapter 10

Another week later Athena and Tony had finished the first prototype for the flight stabilizers that hopefully would prevent Tony from smashing into a wall again.

Athena was sitting at a computer, checking over the data they were receiving, whilst Tony was closing the metal frame around his arm. There was a repulsor attached to it in front of Tony's hand, slightly smaller than the ones on the boots, and a few wires going beneath Tony's tank top, into the Arc reactor.

"I thought you stopped making weapons" Pepper said, who had come into the workshop.

"This is a flight stabilizer, it's completely harmless" Tony answered, lifting his arm and raising his hand so that the repulsor was facing away from him. "Powering up in three, two, one-" Athena called out from where she was sitting at a computer.

The repulsor activated and Tony was shot back and crashed into the wall behind him. Pepper screamed and covered her head with her hands and stepped back a little.

Athena on the other hand rushed to where Tony had hit the wall, but slowed down when he sat up and said "Well I didn't expect that"

"It's not the first time" Athena tried to calm Pepper down and helped Tony up. Pepper just looked at them, still shocked, but caught herself again and said that Obadiah Stane was waiting for Tony upstairs.

Athena decided to stay in the workshop, since even though Tony trusted Obadiah, they didn't want anyone to know of their collaboration just yet.

A/N: This is exactly like in the movie so I am not going to bother writing it, I might do it in the future tho

Athena was working on the flight stabilizers when Tony came down again with two slices of pizza, offering her one, which she gladly accepted.

"It didn't go well, did it?" Athena asked, leaning back in her chair when she saw Tony's expression. He looked up, surprised. Normally nobody could tell what was going on inside him, Athena was the first to ever notice that something was bothering him.

"The board wants to cut me out because apparently I have PTSD or something" he answered, clearly annoyed.

"Well that they presume you have PTSD is not surprising, I mean you literally got kidnapped and practically tortured in that cave, but that isn't a good reason to cut you out of your own company" Athena said after taking a bite from her pizza slice.

"Exactly. Obadiah and Pepper didn't believe me when I said I was being responsible on the company's behalf" Tony seemed relieved that at least someone understood what he was talking about.

~timeskip~

A week later Athena and Tony had perfected the flight stabilizers and also built another one. Tony was now ready to test the repulsors together with the flight stabilizers. He was again standing in the middle of the square made out of fireproof panels they had set up for the first test with the repulsor boots.

"For a lack of a better option Dummy is still on fire safety. If you spray me again and I'm not on fire I'm donating you to a city college" Tony instructed the robot whilst Athena was trying to hold in a laugh at how he talked to the robot.

"Let's start with 1% thrust capability in three...two...one" Athena called out from the computer and Tony activated the repulsors.

Sparks came out of the repulsors on his hands and feet, but they were sort of expecting that, but Athena was glad nonetheless that the Arc reactor seemed fine. Tony looked very unsteady but he was hovering about half a meter over the ground, the stats showed that the boots were providing about 75% percent of the thrust and the stabilizers the remaining 25%.

After a few seconds of him struggling to stay upright Tony dropped to the ground again, stumbling a bit but he didn't fall over.

"Please don't follow me around cause I feel like I'm going to catch on fire spontaneously" he said to Dumm-E, because when he took a step forward and Dumm-E raised his arm? Head? Whatever it is, he raised it and pointed it at Tony.

"Let's bring it up to 2.5" Tony told Athena and walked back to the middle of the square.

"Are you sure? It must take a lot of strength to stay upright. Wouldn't it be better to take a break, even just for a few minutes?" Athena warned, but sighed when she saw Tony's expression and focused back on the hologram screen in front of her.

"Ready?" she asked. "Yeah" Tony answered and Athena noticed his body tensing up, so he wouldn't risk collapsing under the sudden force from beneath his feet and hands.

"Ok, 2.5 percent thrust in three...two...one" Athena watched as Tony's feet left the ground once again and he slowly flew up, this time he was at least one and a half meters in the air when he started to turn away from Athena.

When he moved backwards Athena backed away slightly, she didn't want to get in the way of the repulsors. Tony managed to turn around and was now flying rather fast towards the other side of the workshop. He managed to move away from the wall, but flew over to his very expensive cars instead.

"Now this is where I don't want to be" he said, which made Athena roll her eyes, as he said it in a way that implied that he would prefer to crash into a wall, rather than smash his cars. "Ahh not the car not the car yikes" she heard from Tony, who was hovering right above a blue car, which Athena didn't recognise.

Tony let out a sigh of relief when he was away from the cars, but he was now flying towards all the machinery and equipment, which was even worse, at least in Athena's eyes. A ton of different papers were launched upwards by the repulsors.

After flying between the different tables and workstations Tony raised his arms and pointed the flight stabilizers away from him, so that he was now flying back to the metal square in the middle of the lab. "Could be worse, could be worse, we're fine" he said with a nervous chuckle. Athena wanted to reply something, but the more reasonable part of her brain decided against it.

Tony flew back to the plattform and straightened himself above it, so that it looked like he was standing in the air. Athena watched as he slowly throttled the repulsors and landed on the ground, nearly falling. He turned around to Dumm-E, who raised the fire extinguisher and said: "NO! No no no" Dumm-E lowered the extinguisher in an almost sad way, which made Athena laugh.

Tony looked back to her and said: "Yeah, I can fly" 'I can too, but better' Athena answered in her mind, but she didn't say it out loud.

She smiled, glad that they had finally managed to get the repulsors and the flight stabilizers to work properly, but she wasn't too happy about all the sparks she saw while Tony was in the air. Tony took off the flight stabilizers and handed them to Athena, who got to work examining them to see if there was any damage whilst Tony took off his boots. 

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