Night Mistress

Chapter 17

Two weeks passed since then. It was the middle of November. Most families would be thinking about Thanksgiving meals by now. Mine was still stuck on what happened in Gulmira, and with fixing my suit.

Then again, Tony was working on the Iron Man suit too so I guess it was just a Stark thing.

The suit had been finished for some days now.

I was working on my moves. If been taking out more people in the LA gangs, breaking a lot more bones than I had intended. There was some left over anger from Yinsen's home and Stane's existing. There was a dummy that I would train with. I called him Bob. Cause he bobbed when I kicked him.

Technically this was Bob the Twentieth...I broke the other nineteen, figuring out how strong I could punch without killing a man. So far I was going to be killing a lot more people.

Preferably Stane, who was no doubt suffering right now under my own brand of annoyances.

Cause see, nothing in his house worked. Not his hot water, not his phone, hot his electrocity. When he got to work, he found his computer would only have an Arabic option. If IT came around to fix it, it'd change to French. And you think that'd be the biggest annoyance but no. As the Language-Virus has its fun, it would be accessing Stane's funds to drain them. All to various charities based in the Middle East. And it would find all of his funds. Even the ones he thought couldn't be found.

But my favorite part.

My high time favorite part of the whole thing.

Was that his alarm clock was the only thing that worked.

And it would only sing 'Baby' until Stane left his house.

Yeah. That was great.

It...it really made getting up in the morning worth it.

Tony came up behind me. He was working at the table, but he was walking closer towards me. "So. Night Mistress?"

I kicked Bob's stomach. He bobbled back so I punched his head. "Yeah?"

"Why that?" Tony asked.

Bob came back. My hand grabbed his shoulder, stilling him. "Took you two weeks to ask that?"

Tony shrugged. "Had stuff to do. Why Night Mistress?"

"It sounded cool."

"Huh."

"I'm Becky Stark. Does it need another reason?" I asked, giving Bob a few rapid punches to the chest. He bobbed back and forth with the punches. "Did you have a better name for me?"

"Not yet-"

"Not ever."

"Well there's going to be something better than Mistress-"

I grabbed my bo staff, doing a spin jump to Bob. The stick hit his head. It broke it off like a demented game of T-ball.

His head bounced off the wall. It hit the wall, bouncing off a shitty painting.

When I landed, I huffed in annoyance. "That's twenty." Dropping my stick, I grabbed Bob's body to drag it to a trash bin. "Such a shame."

Tony had ducked behind his head. "Twenty?!"

"I've bought them in bulk." I excused to him. "There's another five upstairs, and ten on the way. Is Mistress a good name now?"

"How does bunting a head across the room make Mistress a good name?" Tony asked.

"Because apparently I'm a Mistress that likes beating you with a stick."

Tony groaned. "I didn't need to know that."

"I didn't need to know your routine for getting rid of one night stands." I countered. "At least now we're both unhappy."

Tony grimaced in disgust.

"Yeah!" I gave him the finger. He threw a pen at my head. I threw the head of Bob in retailiation. Tony threw a shoe.

We were fighting like that when Pepper walked in. Like a snowball fight but you were in a mechanic shop instead of a field of snow. Starks don't get snow, I guess, the fuckers. But we do get Pepper's cold stare of disappointment.

I paused in my fighting, looking over to her. She was focusing more on Tony than me. Which was fine. This was their fight and I wanted no part of it. I picked up Bob's body, dragging it the rest of the way to the bin. "I'm just...gonna take this away. Then do the 'glad I'm not in a relationship' dance."

Tony gave me a sneer. I sneered back.

Once I was 'out' of hearing range, Tony started talking. We still needed Pepper to go collect the files- Stane had removed my access to the server. That's why I added the alarm clock.

"I need you to go to my office. You're going to hack into the mainframe and you're going to retrieve all the recent shipping manifests." Tony picked up the USB. He gave it to Pepper, who looked very uncomfortable with it. "This is a lock chip. This'll get you in. It's probably under Executive Files. If not, they put it on a ghost drive, in which case you need to look for the lowest numeric heading."

"And what do you and Becky plan to do with this information if I bring it back here?" Pepper asked.

"Same drill. They've been dealing under the table, and we're going to stop them." Tony answered blatantly. "We're going to find my weapons and destroy them."

"Tony, you know that I would help you with anything, but I cannot help you if you're going to start all of this again." Pepper told him.

"There is nothing except this." Tony argued. "There's no art opening. There is no benefit. There is nothing to sign. There is the next mission and nothing else."

"Is that so?" Pepper replied. "Well, then, I quit."

Tony stared at her like he'd never seen her before. "You stood by my side all these years while I reaped the benefits of destruction. And now that I'm trying to protect the people that I put in harm's way, protect Becky's legacy, you're going to walk out?"

"You're going to kill yourself, Tony. You're going to get Becky killed. I'm not going to be a part of it." Pepper countered.

Don't use me in your stupid foght!

I'm still holding the Beating Stick!

"I shouldn't be alive, unless it was for a reason. Becky barely made it out of that place alive. She understands this is important- and why. She's always been smart- smarted than me and I'm making things right. She shouldn't need to clean up my mistakes. I'm not crazy, Pepper. I just finally know what I have to do. And I know in my heart that it's right."

Fuck...now I wanna hug him.

Then beat him with the Stick.

Because I don't like dealing with emotions.

"You're all I have, too, you know."

Pepper I won't beat you because honestly you'd take the Stick and beat me with it.

==NM==

AN: I AM HOME FROM AFRICA AND I'VE NEVER FELT HAPPIER!

Well I DID feel better when I had this update ready! There wasn't any WiFi, and this was supposed to be a Christmas present. That's what I get for making writer plans on vacation.