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 Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2012 10:42 pm
Venser was jarred from his thoughts as he turned his gaze to the sound of the heavy electronic lock releasing itself, and slowly swinging ajar. His eyebrow quirked, as he took a few cautious steps to his exit. He had read V for Vendetta, so naturally he was more than just a little bit wary of any mind-blowing surprises that might have been waiting at the other side of that door. But hold on, maybe the so-called 'tests' that Stark mentioned had nothing to do with laboratories and bar graphs, maybe he was thinking of a more practical means of testing the young mutant out.
That's fine, if Stark wanted to watch Venser toss some security robots around or dunk some guards, he was game. The Danger Room already subjected Venser to some of the closest calls anyone could have in their wildest dreams. He'd love to see Stark Industry's security forces top it!
.....A rather eerie 8 minutes or so later, the suspense was starting to get to Venser, making him nervous of every corner he turned. The tail of his coat blew behind him as he broke into a sprint, just trying to find a way out of the winding maze of this compound. But then the breathes of someone other than himself broke his sprint, and he made his way into the workshop. Sprawled across the floor was Antoinette, and he rushed over to her side, shocked by the sudden change of coloration to her skin....as well as the rather sizable hole in the middle of her chest. The flickering from the arc reactor lying on the table caught his attention. Why did she take it out?? He took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
"Antoinette? Hey, what happened? Please, don't fade out on me, just tell me what I need to do."
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Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2012 10:53 pm
She clutched at his hand, desperate for something to cling to.
"Miss Stark was attempting to repair her reactor alone, against her father's request. I have sent out a call to him, but he does not seem to be answering... shall I try to contain Mr. Banner?" JARVIS asked, Toni wanted to shut the damn thing off, she pointed to the flickering reactor,
"Need to fix.... " she gasped, hoping maybe he'd understand. Despite her condition, her mind didn't stop working,
"Your power... can.... probably fix.... what's wrong... Magneto once... took my dad's suit apart.... piece by....piece... he could find any anomalies... you can... as well..." she coughed, she could taste the discharge now that it was flowing into her lungs. She hoped the guy had a smatter of intelligence when it came to what she just explained to him.
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Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2012 11:23 pm
Venser felt his adrenals rush as Toni try to explain the situation between pained gasps. His gaze trailed from hers, to the Arc reactor, to her bosom and her lips....damn it, he did -not- need to let his gaze trail to that stuff. Alright. She was not replacing it, she needed to manually fix it, and apparently her own body's functions started shutting down before she could finish. He kissed her bangs and took his coat off, laying it on her to keep her warm and from going into shock. Rising to his feet, he stretched his arm out to the device, levitating it in front of him.
"JARVIS, I need some long nose pliers, and the thinnest rubber work gloves available. Where are they?" JARVIS directed him to a tool box on the second shelf beneath the counter, where Venser took out what he needed, pulling the gloves taut to his fingers. He turned to the device, opening the core's shell and inspecting the circuitry. His fingers outstretched, he turned it about like a globe, inspecting it from all angles. He had to work fast.
First, he saw that some of the cables were either disconnected or torn. It was a simple enough process to change the chemical compound of the leads into permanent magnets, and reassigned them where JARVIS directed. As for the torn wires, JARVIS had spares prepared for Venser, which he carefully fed in. The core was now returning to 45% capacity.
Venser next unscrewed a plate on the other side of the core, inspecting what seemed to be the real problem....the inner casing had been compressed, cutting off energy flow throughout the reactor. Sweat trickled down his brow, and he wiped it with his sleeve. This was a much more delicate operation than just dismantling a radio, this was a girl's heart, so to speak. Carefully, slowly, he expanded the metal, feeling it flex as if it were his own muscles. He peered in more deeply, making the necessary tweaks to the power couple, the attentuator, making sure the breaker points opened and closed as needed, and even making a few adjustments to the bridge circuit, replacing the damaged insulators and running a triple check on the current limiter before closing the lid and taking the reactor in hand, turning back to the girl was barely even breathing. He set it in and locked it in place.
Venser reached down and took her hand, feeling his breathing go almost still as he waited for signs of life to return to her.
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Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2012 11:40 pm
There was a soft hiss as the grabbers, which her captors had installed in her body years ago, grabbed onto the reactor, its light, once a soft glow, shone a bit brighter than it had in a while. Toni gasped as her heart was forced to beat normal. Her lungs were allowed to expand more now that the discharge was being pushed back to the surrounding area of the reactor. After a few coughs, Toni's head lulled from side to side, she felt the rest of her body slowly resume normal functions... Venser did it... she looked up at smiled at him, forget he probably had seen the gruesome scars and added technology her captors bestowed upon her, something she never liked letting others see or know.
"Thank you Ven...." she sighed and closed her eyes, waiting for the dizziness that had filled her head to settle. She was still freezing, her blood flow had slowed down, so now her body core was probably below 85 degrees, making her feel like she had been sitting in the snow for days.
"The reactor's levels are stable and holding at 68%... Congratulations Mr. Moorland... Sir will be very pleased..." JARVIS said, almost sounding happy. Glow in Toni's reactor was no longer flickering, and with each passing minute, her breathing returned to normal. She tried to sit up,
"Dad will... hehe... he's gonna kill me..." she giggled weakly. Indeed once her father found out, Toni was gonna be in for a long earful. She tried to make light of the situation, hoping to steer it away from the pending questions Venser was most likely about to ask...
She was going to have to tell him about her past... possibly reveal more than she should about her reactor... her weakness... and if Emma figured out that Antoniette Stark was vulnerable... it would spell disaster for many...
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2012 12:22 am
Venser heaved a rather huge sigh of relief, an accomplished grin tugging at the corners of his mouth as he saw Toni slowly coming back to life, the reactor shining with an illuminated energy he hadn't noticed before. He wrapped his arms around her waist, letting Toni sit up against him as he sat back against the work counter. It was going to take a while for her body heat to return to normal, so.....he didn't really mind sitting still to keep this pretty thing warm for a while.
"Heh, well I just hope Mr. Stark doesn't blame me for breaking out of my cell. I didn't really know what to think when it happened."
As she sat curled up in his lap, using his coat to blanket her, he couldn't help but notice how nice the scent of her skin was. Or her hair. Or how soft the curves of her body was.....he really had to redirect his train of thought before he crashed.
'Uhm, that's a really interesting battery your father designed for you. I'd never seen anything like it, all the working parts I'd checked were vastly improved from their normal textbook counterparts."
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2012 12:30 am
Battery... well... that was one way to put it. Even in the case of her father, the reactors were designed to keep the Stark's alive, albeit for different reasons. Toni closed her eyes,
"Because he didn't design it... my mother did..." she said softly, as they sat with an awkward silence over them, Toni noticed how much warmer Venser seemed than most men who had held her. Maybe it was because he was a mutant... or that her body core was low... but it was a very soothing warmth.
"My mother designed it... but.... it was added to later on in my life.... now... all we can do is maintain it... without it... my body functions shut down..." she said again.
"I was.... kidnapped... when I was 16.... my reactor was removed... and I was put on life support and a bypass for 4 years. My captors... were technology thieves... the Arc Reactor was a breakthrough in many areas... including that of the Stark Industries... so... I was taken for it... but instead of letting me die... my captors kept me alive in case they needed my smarts for something..." she pulled his jacket tightly around herself, as if to ward of not the cold, but the bite of fear and pain the bad memories still brought her.
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2012 5:36 pm
Venser felt like a heel. He had a feeling he'd asked something he shouldn't have. And here Toni was, pouring her heart out about a trauma most people don't experience even in cumulative lifetimes. He brought his arms around her, holding Toni comfortingly.
"Why tell me all of this? I thought girls loved keeping secrets from boys." there was a hint of jest in his voice, and he didn't want her to feel cornered by her bad memories. Readjusting his seat, he rubbed his hands up and down her arms to warm her up.
"Now that you're free of all that, you got your entire life ahead of you to enjoy little things, like going to school, hitting the mall, putting off your homework....you know, the usual teen queen stuff I see in school."
(Ugh, crappy post, sorry.)
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 11:20 pm
Toiling didn't know why she was telling him this... She didn't like reliving such a horrible time in her life, and indeed she was forever trapped by the memories... The arc's fragility was a constant reminder that until her father figured the whole thing out, she'd never escape it just yet.
"You clearly forget I'm and multimillion dollar heiress... And an avenger... I do t get those luxuries..." she let out a sigh and closed her eyes. She had needed to be held then. It was always scary whenever her body could not hold out long without her reactor and began shutting down. So many things and feels would go through you... And none of them were ever pleasent. That's why her father made her promise never to repair her reactor alone... Only he knew what it was like to be dying in that way... As soon as an image of her father jumped into her head, Toni held into Venser tighter, wishing he was Tony at that moment, but thankful all the same that he was there.
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 11:51 pm
Venser chuckled a bit, stroking Toni's hair gently. Apparently even being at the top of the world has its lonely times. This was the first time in a rather long time that he'd held a girl in his arms like this. Her hair smelled clean, but he wasn't overpowered by perfume or hair products. Thoughts of closing the physical distance between them danced about in his head, and he really wished something would happen to drive them out. The last thing he wanted was to get kicked out of her home, this many stories up.
A holographic screen materialized in front of them. It seemed to be a live news feed of the city, downtown. Flames consumed the buildings, and punishing sea waves crashed into the interlinking suspended roads. JARVIS was getting a transmission on an encrypted line, specifically for Avengers.
"Holy sh*t....it's Namor." Venser whispered.
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Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 12:14 am
Toni glanced up when he called out a name and looked up at the screen. Those were streets that had not been evcatuated yet. They stood up and watched as fire and sea clashed together, many people screaming and seeking shelter.
"These streets will be submerged in water... They will be uninhabitable for years..." JARVIS said. Toni didn't see any of the team around, guess that meant she had to deal with it,
"You know him?" she asked turning to Venser.
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Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 12:51 am
"Uh yeah....Namor is Atlantian royalty. Just recently made it into the higher ranks of the X-Men, was probably just a political move. Now he's got one of the fragments of the Phoenix Force."
Venser rose to his feet. He was hella on edge. Scared, even. Namor was already short-tempered before the Force had overtaken him. But now, mankind at large had to contend with a man with an axe to grind with just about anything that didn't have gills.
"I'm not entirely sure that even the X-Men have what it takes to stop this jerk...."
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Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 1:27 am
"Never know unless one tries..." she said and walked over to one of her other suits, this one had been fitted for undersea work.
"JARVIS, send a message to Thor and give him my coordinates." she ordered as JARVIS began to assemble the suit onto Toni's trim body. Not even noticing that Venser was watching with awe as Iron Woman was being assembled. The helmet was the last to get snapped on, the face plate clanking shut, purple lit eyes turning on as JARVIS turned the suit on and adjusted to Toni's preferences and body's ailment.
She rolled the shoulders and turned to Venser. He didn't have a suit or uniform, so he would take on a lot of damage... But they had a spare suit of Clint.
"Follow me."
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Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 11:46 pm
Venser opened his mouth to argue. Honestly, this was the time to run, not fight. Or at least wait for help. Toni didn't seem to have the ears to listen to that, though. If worse came to worse, he knew he could at least get her out, though.
Before another thought passed through his head though, he stood in silent awe as he witnessed the marvel of Toni's suit-up. The seemingly compact assembly line of mechanical arms snapped the various parts of her armor to her body, spinning the bolts in place and fastening them together in a seemingly flawless mechanical symphony.
Toni stepped down, this time as Iron Maiden, and Venser had to force his jaw shut. He was halfway inclined to ask if Mr. Stark was holding classes, or maybe needed an extra assistant. Then she said something weird.
"Wait. Say what? Follow you where?"
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Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 11:56 pm
Toni led Venser to an upper floor where There were locker rooms, a sparing room, weight room and various other things needed for work out and other Avengers stuff. She walked into a locker room and opened Hawkeye's locker, pulling out a spare suit and tossing it to him
"Suit up rookie..." she walked out of the room to let him. Hanged as she had JARVIS pull up schematics of the area they were about to head into.
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Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2012 5:12 pm
Venser quirked a brow as the girl took him by the hand and led him into the locker room, tossing some rather professional looking purple and black spandex, with some rather firm plating covering the vitals.
Left alone, Venser took his clothes off, down to his brief shorts before squeezing his way into the outfit. He couldn't help thinking this was someone else's clothes, since not even the Navy SEALs were as hard to get into as the Avengers. The outfit was.....well, it fit almost too well.
Stepping out of the locker room, he approached Iron Maiden, his mask off. Apparently JARVIS was still debriefing her.
"Well then, are we ready to go stop a Phoenix?"
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