Happy sped through the streets making his way down to Hammer Industries as Natalie had requested. We knew that's where Ivan Vanko was as we had just beaten it out of Hammer earlier.
"When we arrive I need you to back up the perimeter," she said to Happy as she untied her hair and began taking her clothes off, "I'm gonna enter the facility and take down the target." Natalie was only in her bra and I caught Happy trying to peak through the rear-view mirror as he responded, "I got it. I got it."
I felt the car swerve right due to Happy's lack of concentration. "Watch the road," I warned him, rolling my eyes.
I took my service dress jacket off and held it out in front of Natalie to cover her whilst she got changed. Happy's eyes darted to me quickly thinking that I was going to strip too before he realized what I was doing, "Nice try, Pervert, I'm just looking out for a friend."
Now embarrassed, Happy kept his head straight, focusing immensely on the road ahead of us. I noticed him open his mouth wanting to say something but he changed his mind. Natalie was done changing, so I turned around to sit straight in my seat.
"Say it," I ordered, curious as to why he thought it was better left unsaid. Happy shifted in his seat uncomfortably before revealing, "Your underwear is in the glove box if you want them back."
My face heats up with embarrassment. At this point, it was safe to assume everyone knew, but I was still perplexed as to how and why they ended up in Happy's glovebox. Nonetheless, I open the glove compartment, and there sat the infamous black, lacey thong.
The car went silent waiting for my reaction which I refused to be let known outwardly. I closed to glove box slowly not moving any other muscle in my body.
"You can keep it," I offered with all my kindness and concern. Happy just took a huge breath out like he'd been holding it in the entire car ride.
I whipped my phone out to distract myself and saw there were 47 texts and 12 missed calls from Lewis. I switched my phone to silent during the Expo and hadn't turned it back. I assumed the incident must have made its way onto the news and Lewis was worried about me. I decided to call him and reassure him I was okay:
"Y/N, what the fuck is happening? Are you okay?" he screeched on the other end of the phone.
I took a deep breath before responding knowing it was going to be hard to explain everything without him freaking out and worrying about me, "I'm fine. I'm not at the Expo anymore," I informed him, which only lead to more unnecessary questions.
"If you're not at the Expo where are you then?" he asked, concern apparent in his voice. "I'm on the way to Hammer Industries."
"Why are you at Hammer Industries?"
I sighed knowing full well I never should have opened that can of worms, "Vanko's in there, he's the one behind the mess at the Expo."
"Vanko? Who's Vanko?"
"Ivan Vanko. The guy from Monaco with the arc reactor. It's him, he's alive, he's trying to kill Tony Stark and I'm going to stop him!" I rambled.
"You're going to do what?!" he yelled, anger and fret apparent as his voice rose a few octaves.
"You heard me," I said flippantly.
"No! But you—"
"Bye, Lewis! Love you," I said pathetically as I hung up the phone not giving him any time to respond. In the corner of my eye, I caught Happy making a face.
"But didn't you and Tony just..." he trailed off not wanting to say more.
I rolled my eyes, "Happy, just shut up and drive!"
Happy finally pulled up right outside the door to Hammer Industries, we all got out, Natalie now dressed in a black bodysuit and a gun hoisted on her thigh. "Stay in the car," she told Happy but he refused.
"I'm not staying in the car."
"She said to stay in the car!" I repeated louder just in case Happy missed it the first time. Natalie climbed the stairs and begins unlocking the door, Happy followed, directly disobeying orders. I run up the door also.
"What are you wearing? Look, I'm not letting you go in there alone," he said having Natalie's best interests at heart.
"She's fine. She's got me." I informed him.
He frowned, "At least she's wearing something more appropriate," looking at my shirt, pencil skirt, and heels.
"I'll be fine," I said, taking off my jacket, and undoing a few buttons on my shirt leaving the front open so my bra and the top half of my torso were exposed, "Running in heels has become a hobby of mine recently," I reached into the pocket of my jacket pulling the air-blade out, tossing the jacket at Happy.
"You want to help? Keep the car running," Natalie suggested to Happy as she managed to bypass the security system and open the door. Natalie and I ran in and like a dog with a bone, Happy followed as the security breach alarm went off.
Happy was quick to throw a punch at the first security guard that came running towards us, giving Natalie and me a way around him.
A second guard came through as we ran through a set of glass doors, Nat slide underneath him and tossed two taser discs at either one of his legs causing him to convulse at the electric shock and fall to the ground.
We both continue down the hallway until we hear the footsteps of another guard making his way by.
"Let me take this one," I whisper to Natalie as I run towards a blue trolley parked against the wall of the hallway. I press one button on the air-blade to unveil a sword as I jumped onto the trolley swinging the blade into his head as I jumped down, landing with my feet on either side of his unconscious body.
We ran along the hallway, Nat sliding under a guard's legs and hitting him in the crotch causing him to bend over in pain. I pressed the button on the air-blade to conceal the blade again and popped it into my bra to stow away. I then ran to the crouched man, using my hands to push off his back and swing my legs from underneath me to kick the next guard down.
Jumping over the unconscious bodyguards we sprinted down the hallway, taking a right at the end.
We heard two guards talking, so Natalie threw two flash bombs at them. They went off releasing white smoke that disoriented the guards so that we could attack them blind. At the same time, Nat delivered her guard a high-kick, while I slid to the ground serving him a low blow to the legs because my pencil skirt was limiting my methods of attack. The guards fell to the ground one after the other, making two loud thuds as they did so.
The noise summoned another guard who came forward us with a baton. Natalie catches his arm with a wire, pulling him closer so she can punch him in the face and wrap the wire around his neck.
"I guess it's okay for me to use weapons now," I mumbled, pulling my air-blade out and releasing both blades this time as two more guards came rushing out. I swirled the air-blade around in my hand before using one side to clothe-line the guard on my right. Once he was knocked down I switched my blade to my other hand and swung the blade into his abdomen, knocking the wind out of him.
One more man came in with pepper spray in his hand but Natalie took care of him by grabbing the arm holding the pepper spray, twisting it around until he loosened his grip, and then swinging her leg around to kick him in the back of the head.
We then strutted our way forward, stepping over bodies on our way out. I spotted that Natalie walked past a guard who went by untouched. I stopped and made a "psst" sound, making Nat throw the pepper spray back to me.
I caught it and sprayed the man in the eyes, causing him to cry out in pain. The whole maneuver was agile and honestly, badass.
I jogged a little to catch up with her, "I think we make a pretty good team." I smiled looking back at all the damage we'd done.
"You were pretty good," she joked, face still serious, though.
"A partnership can't start based on lies, though," I told her, hoping should tell me who she really was and what she was doing pretending to be Tony's assistant if she wasn't one.
"Natasha Romanoff," she finally admitted. My face lit up with a smile, I knew there was something about her that screamed Euporean agent. "So you are a Russian spy."
She nodded not wanting to make a big fuss out of it, "Non ducor, duco..." I said in Latin, testing to see if that was really true.
"I'm not lead, I led," she translated, "So you speak Latin too?"
"Oh, hell no," I denied, "It was something I remember seeing in a book I think. It's good advice though."
We both laughed before Happy joined us. I sounded out of breath as he used his thumb to point back at the row of bodies lying in the hallway, "Did you...did you do that?"
Neither confirmed or denied it as we made our way to Hammer's office. I readied my weapon as Natasha pulled out two guns and cocked them.
We burst through the doors only to find two guards hanging from the ceiling, seemingly dead. The chair in front of the security system was empty, Vanko had escaped.
"He's gone," she says into her earpiece before strutting towards the computer systems. I followed her. Happy and I watched as she rebooted Rhodey's suit, making sure he was able to control it again.
"Reboot complete," she informed him as Tony's face in real-time appeared on the screen, "You got your best friend back."
"Thank you very much, Agent Romanoff," Tony said, causing me to furrow my eyebrows.
"Wait, Tony, you knew?"
"I knew like three years ago," Tony exaggerated, "But seriously, I found out after the party."
"Well done on the new chest piece. I am reading significant higher output and your vitals all look promising." Natasha revealed as a 3D model of Tony's new arc reactor popped up on the screen next to his face.
"Yes, for the moment, I'm not dying. Thank you." Tony disclosed, which lifted my mood tremendously.
"What's with all the secrets?" I exclaimed, "And why am I the last person to know everything?"
"Yeah, believe it or not, my old man helped me from beyond the grave," Tony started, "S.H.I.E.L.D blocked off all my communication, incoming and outgoing calls. You know you would have been the first person I told."
A little bit of weight lifted off my shoulders as I no longer feeling guilty for not calling Tony, now knowing it wouldn't have made the difference. However, there was still some part of me that was apologetic for the fact that I never even tried.
"What do you mean you're not dying? Did you just say you're dying?" a voice said from the other computer screen. We all cocked our heads to see Pepper's face on it. It seemed as if she was talking through a CCTV camera, but none of us, not even Natasha was sure of how this was happening.
"Suddenly, I'm not the last person to find everything out," I muttered wryly.
"I was going to tell you, I didn't want to alarm you," Tony used as an excuse which only freaked out Pepper more. "You were gonna tell me? So you were dying?" she concluded, her voice sounding whiny through the screen.
"You didn't let me."
"Why didn't you tell me that?"
"I was gonna make you an omelet and tell you!"
"That's what that thing on the plane was?" I questioned, my face scrunched up, and feeling quite disturbed.
"Hey, hey. Save it for the Honeymoon," Natasha butt in, sick of the neverending back and forth between Tony and Pepper, "You've got incoming, Tony. Looks like the fight is coming to you."
We watched as Tony and Rhodes fought off the Hammer drones that landed in the dome to attack. One by one the triangles on the screen began to disappear indicating a drone had been eliminated. Once all the drones were gone we received another notification: another triangle was making its way over.
"Heads up, there's another drone on its way," I warned Rhodes and Tony. Natasha added, "This one looks different. The repulsor signature is significantly higher."
The new drone was Ivan Vanko ready to take Tony Stark out once and for all. He'd waited for this moment for a long time and now he could finally avenge his late father.
Rhodes and Tony didn't fear as Rhodey had a weapon up his sleeve that Tony didn't know about.
The Ex-Wife Hammer gave to him during the weaponization meeting. By firing this the fight would be over in a matter of seconds and the day would be saved. However, much to his surprise, when Rhodes fired the missile it bounced if Vanko's suit, landed straight into the water below him, and fizzled out.
The duo soon realized they need to fight Vanko the traditional way. They tried to get a few hits in but it wasn't as easy as taking down the drones that attacked them previously. Plus, Tony had already used his one-time signature move to defeat the drone army from either.
In less than five minutes, Vanko had both Rhodes and Tony caught in the grip of his electrical whips, the two several feet away from each other. Tony had quickly remembered the explosion the two had caused when they fought at his house.
Reminding Rhodes of the incident, they both repeated the maneuver causing a huge explosion, sending the both of them in different directions. Since Vanko was at the epicenter of the blast he was fatally injured, his last words being, "You lose."
Although confused at first, the pair soon noticed that the reactors on the dead drones were flashing red, possibly meaning they were going to explode. They wasted no time escaping, flying out of the dome to safety. However, Tony realized that one person may not be safe: Pepper.
As quickly as he could he swooped down to scoop her up and fly her to safety, seconds later the entire city blew up with flames as the drones detonated. He placed Pepper down on the roof of a tall building where the two argued.
Pepper was unable to handle the unpredictability of Stark and the stress of running Stark Industries, leading her to rage quit. In the middle of Pepper's breakdown, Tony dove in for a long-awaited kiss.
A kiss the two had been meaning to share for some time. Rhodes however, being the best friend that he is, cock-blocked Tony, interrupting the romance.
He joked around telling them to, "Get a new roof."
You were elated to have formed a new friend in Natasha, your old friends reuniting, and Tony and Pepper finally being a couple, the way you wanted them to for almost a year...