The Seventh Avenger

Chapter 24: No More Hiding

Almost immediately after we had discovered the new element, Tony had started to rush around his workshop, putting items such as large pliers, sledge hammers and crate lifters in a small pile in the center of the room. I only watched from the distance at first, not wanting to interrupt him while he seemed to me on a role though I soon found that he was handing me a pair of safety goggles and the sledgehammer from the pile, much to my surprise and bewilderment.   

"And what exactly am I supposed to do with this?" I ask him as he quickly hurries away back towards the pile of objects, while I adjust my grip on the somewhat heavy sledge hammer, gripping the end of the rubber grip so that the heavy head of the hammer was hanging just above the ground beside my legs.

He whirls around and too my surprise, there seemed to be an excited glint in his eyes as a grin also works its way on his face. "You see that wall?" he asks, raising a hand to point to a specific area of the wall behind me, which too my surprise had very faint yellow markings on it. After I turn back around to face him, he gives a brief nod of his head towards the hammer in my hand. "Well, you're gonna go and you're gonna smash a hole in it."

"Wait, what?" I exclaim, not actually expecting him to say this.

"Oh c'mon! It'll be easy," Tony dismisses with a wave of his hand, cutting off the protests that I had been about to voice. "Just lift it, swing it, break it. You see? Easy!"

"But why?"

"Good question," he replies cryptically before he turns on his heel and starts to walk back to the center of the room, leaving me to make a small noise of disbelief before placing the hammer gently on the ground and hurry after him, the safety goggles still in my hands. 

"Tony- you're being awfully cryptic about this," I point out to the back of his head as he continues to move forward, not looking back at me as I say this. "Are you gonna tell me what you're planning, or not?"

"I'm not being cryptic- I'm thinking," he corrects, spinning around so that he was now walking backwards and facing me as he speaks, though I'm surprised to see that his eyes weren't on me, but were on the tall concrete roof above my head. He tilts his head to the side and ceases walking, causing me to also come to a halt so that I didn't end up running right into his chest. My eyes follow his so that I was now staring at the roof, though all I saw was roof- nothing 'head tilting' worthy about it. 

I hear Tony mutter something under his breath to himself behind me, causing me to turn and revert my attention back to him. "Alright, I'll bite," I exclaim causing him to finally turn to flicker his eyes to me. "What the hell are we doing? And some detail would be nice," I ask, leaning my head forward slightly as I say this. 

"We're gonna have to synthesize the element," Tony explains. "And while Jarvis said that it was impossible, I'm never one to shrink away from a challenge," he adds with a smirk, before he reaches towards my hand and gently removes the safety goggles from my fingers. "I need to go upstairs and drill a hole right about there-" He cuts off to briefly point to the spot on the roof that he had just been studying before lowering his hand and continuing, "So that I can access the wires from the power box of the house on the floor above us."

"What are they gonna charge?" I ask curiously, watching as he now fiddles with the goggles in his hands. 

"A Particle Accelerator," Tony explains causing my eyes to go wide at his words. A Particle Accelerator was a device that used giant magnets to fire billions of subatomic particles into their anti-particles at the speed of light to create miniature big bangs. It took a lot to build one even of a small scale, which meant that we needed some...

"Some pipes, which is gonna send the charge exactly where I want it," Tony explains now, finishing the sentence that I had started to say in my head.. "But these pipes are pretty big- so big in fact, that they're gonna have to go through a wall to make sure that they all fit. Which is where you and the sledge hammer come in," He finishes brightly as he then reaches up and much to my annoyance, places the goggles on my face and stretches the band over my head, before letting it go before I can even react. My waves crumple underneath the band and the goggles tug slightly at my eyes, causing me to make a small noise of annoyance and to reach up with my hands to fix the goggles, which were a little too large for my face.