Disclaimer: Anything not immediately recognizable as a registered trademark of Marvel and/or Paramount Pictures is probably mine. Anything you do recognize I'm simply borrowing.

Author's Note: In my infinite wisdom, I decided one night in May 2010 I was going to write an Iron Man-related, one-shot fic for every song that Tiësto included in his Elements of Life set list. This amounts to forty-one fics for forty-one songs. The stories don't really have anything to do with the songs, though (ie - these are definitely not songfics).

As the stories are generally not interconnected by anything other than their titles' origins, I have decided not to post them all in a single entry, but to treat them as the separate stories they all are.

Additionally, these aren't typically beta'd before I post them. I try my best to self-edit, but after spending days/weeks/months staring at the same document I've a slight tendency to assume words that aren't there...actually are. Unfortunately, this means that there might be a few missing words, typos, and/or grammatical errors somewhere in the text, to say nothing of the occasional slip in characterization. If you notice anything, please point it out to me and I would be glad to fix it!

Summary: When things go horribly awry at a UN-convened hearing, Pepper finds herself stepping in, saving Tony, and dealing with Hammerdrones for the second time too many in her life.

Other: Movie!verse. Not so vague hints at Tony/Pepper. One-Shot. Post Iron Man 2 by a year or so. Contains small references to the other Avengers.

Carpe Noctum

"I have done this already. Right?" Tony asked, resting his chin on his palm and looking at her. "The Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing was a real thing? I mean, I could have just dreamed up whole song and dance with Senator Stern. I was dying at the time."

Pepper sighed, trying her best to hide her mounting frustration behind her half-filled glass of Coke. Yes, she thought, taking a sip and casting a dark look around the room, let's just put Tony Stark in a room full of people who are almost guaranteed to irritate and annoy him. Because that was a brilliant idea.

"Things have changed, Tony," Pepper said once she was finally able to keep her tone under control. "The UN has reason to believe that North Korea has a functioning suit now." The UN had recently come into some hard evidence that North Korea had – or was at least on the verge of having – its own fully operational, weapons-heavy version of the Iron Man suit. The UN was afraid that politically volatile North Korea had plans to use the suit and had convened this week's hearing to push for a resolution regarding what to do about the North Korean suit – as well as any others that might be in development in other countries.

Tony's eyebrows shot up, crinkling his forehead. "They don't, Pepper. You know they don't. I proved at the last hearing that they don't. Theirs was even the saddest attempt!"

"Tony…" Pepper began. Her exasperation bled into her tone.

"I have better things to do than this," Tony insisted. "More important things."

Pepper ground her teeth. No, he didn't. She had made sure that his schedule was completely clear for the rest of the week so he could attend the hearing. Barring any sudden terrorist attacks, fires, plane crashes, hostage situations, wars, or anything else that would warrant an appearance by Iron Man, Tony Stark definitely did not have anything better to do. "No, no you do—"

"So you're still not convinced you started a cold war, Mr. Stark?"

"Ah, Ambassador Caldwell. A pleasure." Tony offered Ambassador Caldwell his most charming smile while blithely ignoring the ambassador's comments.

Caldwell, however, was not so easily deterred. "You single-handedly started an arms race, Mr. Stark, with that suit of yours. Congratulations, by the way. I hear the newest one handles spectacularly."

"It does, thanks. And, you know, I am pretty sure that I actually privatized world peace." He spread his hands and looked around the room. "Who's going to challenge me? I have the best suit."

"For now, Mr. Stark." Caldwell waved his index finger the way all public officials seemed to do when they wanted to emphasize the fact that they were making a point. "You're not the only brilliant mechanical engineer in the world. Sooner or later, someone else will catch up to you."

Pepper swallowed hard. There was no mistaking the references to either Ivan Vanko or Justin Hammer in Caldwell's words, and Pepper didn't appreciate either. She'd had more than enough of both at the Stark Expo.

"Maybe," Caldwell added, "they'll even surpass you."

Pepper tightened her grip on her glass. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tony shoot her a concerned glance, and then she felt his hand settle on her thigh. He gave her leg a reassuring squeeze, but that just made things worse. He was here now, alive, well. He was safe.

But for how long? How long did they have until the next mission, the next battle? Hours? Days?

Or even less than that?

Forcing a smile, Pepper rose from the small table. Familiar feelings of worry and stress were tightening her insides. She needed a break to clear her head. "If you'll excuse me, Ambassador."

She lightly gripped Tony's shoulder as she passed behind him – trying to reassure and warn him to watch his tongue at the same time – then slipped away from the table and into the crowd. At first she wandered absently through the hall, scanning the crowd as she went. By the table of hors d'oeurves she saw Anton Garikov, the Russian delegate. There, by the elaborate indoor fountain, a small cluster of French and Italian representatives. There was the Eygptian ambassador and his wife and adult son, the Iranian delegates, and the Ugandan representatives.

And…over there Pepper saw a bartender who looked familiar. And a waiter she knew she had seen before. A photographer, a doorman…

Then Pepper saw Agent Natasha Romanov, standing in a floor-length red dress, talking to Armin Müller, the German delegate, and it clicked.

SHIELD agents. Those people she recognized were all SHIELD agents. The bartender was Jason Marlow. The waiter, Kenneth Long. The photographer by the back doors was Elise Cooper.

Pepper felt the knot in her stomach twist. What was SHIELD doing here? It wasn't an international organization. It wasn't mercenary. Pepper understood SHIELD to be a specialized department of Homeland Security, designed to deal with oddities and missions more along the lines of Indiana Jones than James Bond. Running security detail for a room full of world leaders and their guests just didn't seem like SHIELD's style, and the dozen agents she'd seen already couldn't all be here to keep an eye on Tony.

Something had to be wrong.

You don't know that, Pepper thought, though it did little to reassure her. Like Tony's reckless superheroics, SHIELD had become a near-permanent fixture in her life. But unlike Tony, who filled her in as much as she allowed him to, SHIELD was incredibly scant on the details. They'd show up and Pepper would never know why – at least not until something happened. (And it almost always did. She could count on one hand the number of times SHIELD had showed up somewhere and nothing happened.)

Clenching her jaw, she forced herself to push on through the ballroom to the front hall, assuming the front of the building would be much less occupied than the back. She didn't like being left in the dark. She didn't like that the agents were required to tell her as little as possible. But that was how things were, and though she didn't like it, at times she understood it.

Even if it did make her want to kick someone.

Almost as soon as she stepped outside, Pepper felt better. The night air felt wonderful on the skin of her arms and back – cool but not cold, just enough to raise slight goosebumps on her skin. Though the weather wasn't set to hold – the first in a series of autumn thunderstorms was due in later that night – it was perfect now. Pepper breathed, and slowly her nerves began to calm.

"Ms. Potts?"

Pepper turned at the sound of her name. "Oh. Natalie," she said, knowing better than to use Agent Romanov's real name in public. "Hi."

The two women stood in silence for a few minutes, and Pepper wondered if Natasha had followed her outside strictly to keep an eye on her. She wouldn't have been surprised, really, though the idea annoyed her immensely. What did SHIELD think was going to happen here tonight?

She almost asked. Almost.

But she didn't want to face the look Natasha might give her, or the cagey way she would likely try to dodge Pepper's question. It would just make her frustrated and angry, and she'd come out here to get away from those feelings.

"How's the food?" she asked instead, gesturing towards the small plate of food Natasha had in her hand.

"It's not bad." Natasha paused briefly. "Ambassador Caldwell is known for going right for the jugular. What did he say?"

Pepper sighed. Of course Agent Romanov had been watching their conversation with Ambassador Caldwell. "He said Tony had started a second cold war. He's not wrong."

"No," Natasha agreed. "But I don't imagine Mr. Stark liked hearing that."

Pepper cracked a small smile. Stubborn, bull-headed Tony. "He handled it better than I thought he would."

"He is trying." Natasha looked like she was about to add something else, but then her gaze shifted past Pepper. Curious, Pepper looked back over her shoulder – just as Tony lifted a glass into her field of vision.

"Here," he said. "You left yours at the table."

Pepper slowly accepted the glass, shooting Tony a questioning look.

"I figured getting you a refill was a good reason to leave before I, uh, said something regrettable." Tony glanced back down at the glass. "This one has rum in it. Unless you don't want rum. I can't accept it, since, you know. I shouldn't drink. Miss Rushman?"

"No, thank you, Mr. Stark."

"Right. Probably can't drink on the job, can you? Must be the worst job in SHIELD."

"There are worse," Natasha said with a smile. But the smile didn't last, and then Natasha whirled, scanning the skies, just as a high, shrill whine began to fill Pepper's ears. The next thing she knew, Pepper was on the ground, glass of rum and Coke rolling away. Tony had her pinned beneath him, shielding her with his body as the first volley of shells hit.

The force of the blast shattered the windows behind them, raining glass and debris down on Pepper's exposed legs and arms. A wave of raw, blistering heat rushed over her and Pepper gasped, her lungs clogging with hot dust and smoke and ash.

After that, everything was chaos. Inside, the fire alarm blared. Smoke poured out of the bomb-blasted side of the building. SHIELD agents struggled to herd the delegates out of the building and into any of the dozen reinforced SUVs parked along the drive.

Tony scrambled off her, dragging Pepper to her feet behind him. He wrapped an arm around Pepper's shoulders and pulled her in close while taking his phone from his pocket and dialing a number with his free hand. "Happy!" he shouted, starting to hustle Pepper to a low-slung wall near a destroyed fountain. "Happy, I need you! Front drive! Now!" He pushed Pepper down behind the wall, collapsing beside her. Natasha was not far behind.

Tony peered over the wall, watching for Happy. "How're we doing?" he asked Natasha.

Agent Romanov had pulled out her own phone – or something like it, anyway –and was quickly tapping out commands on the backlit display. Her expression, such as it ever changed when she was not undercover, was grim. "We've got at least two hundred units, all coming in low and fast." She looked up from her phone and scanned the skies. "Looks like they're cloaked."

Tony scanned the skies as well. "Are they what I think they are?"

"I suspect so." Natasha turned and pressed a hand to her ear. "Clint, Coulson and the rest of their team are on their way, but they're at least twenty minutes out."

"That far, huh?" Tony swept his gaze over the sky once more. Pepper tried to follow his line of sight, but couldn't see anything. "Well. Two hundred's a few more than I fought last time, but…"

Then Happy's Lexus whipped into the drive, screeching to a halt and leaving skid marks behind on the asphalt. The doors swung open. "Boss!" Happy yelled. "Boss, what's…" Happy's words were drowned out by another shrieking missile. This one went wide, screaming past the UN building. Pepper heard and felt it hit the ground somewhere out of her line of sight.

Tony surged back onto his feet. Pepper jumped up behind him, and Tony shoved her towards the car. She scrambled along as best as she could in her long dress and heels, all but tripping into the backseat of the Lexus. Tony quickly veered off towards the back of the car. "Pop the trunk!"

The trunk opened just as Tony slid around to it. He reached inside, throwing a dark uniform at Natasha, then dragged out the briefcase he used to house the Mark VIII, the improved designs on the Mark V. He dropped the briefcase and kicked it open, then thrust his hands into a pair of waiting gauntlets. The suit quickly unfolded over his body, each seam and joint sliding and locking into place.

"The highest concentration is back behind the building!" Natasha shouted.

Tony nodded. He flexed his arms once, checking the suit over, then jetted off. His voice, altered slightly by the suit, echoed back to them: "I'll go get this party started!"

Then he was gone, circling around behind the building.

That just left Natasha.

"Go," she said to Happy, her voice stern. "Get Ms. Potts out of here. Don't tell us where you've gone until after we've given you the all-clear, understand?"

Pepper could hear a loud roar coming in from somewhere behind them. She twisted in her seat and looked up, peering out the Lexus's rear window. At first, she didn't see anything, but the sound was way, way too loud and too low and too close to be something like an Air Force jet.

"Happy…" she called, just as whatever it was opened fire, raining bullets down on the last fleeing UN delegates. A handful fell, but in the darkness Pepper couldn't tell which ones.

"Get in!" Happy roared at Natasha. The thing was getting dangerously close to the Lexus, still peppering the drive and the SHIELD cars with gunfire. "There's no time! Get in!"

Natasha piled into the backseat beside Pepper, yanking the door closed behind her. Happy gunned the engine, shooting the Lexus out of the drive. Gunfire hailed down on the back of the car as whatever it was overcame them. Pepper screamed as the back window blew in and safety glass rained down on the back of her neck.

Happy jerked the wheel and whipped the Lexus off to the right, dodging out of the line of fire before the thing could take out any more windows. It rushed by overhead with an incredible roar and left a ringing silence in its wake.

Next to Pepper, Natasha was quickly shedding her dress and replacing it with her uniform – a dark, skintight catsuit. "Park somewhere!" she barked at Happy as she tried to lace up her boots.

"I'm not letting you out!"

"Happy, park the goddamned car!" Natasha pointed over Happy's shoulder towards a parking lot. There were only a few scattered cars in it, most of them already riddled with bullet holes. One was still smoking.

"There? Are you crazy?!"

"It's called hiding in plain sight. Just park there and let me out!"

"And what're you going to do? Run out there and get yourself killed?!"

Distantly, Pepper heard popping noises, like firecrackers. She turned back around and looked out across the grounds. Tony streaked across her field of vision, a brilliant blue blur chased by the red-orange afterburners of a dozen missiles. He veered toward the UN building, quickly braking and changing direction so he shot straight up the side of the building and over the roof. The missiles, unable to react with that kind of split-second timing, plowed into the side of the UN building.

The explosion that followed gave Pepper enough light to sweep her eyes across the grounds quickly, searching for the enemies she knew had to be there.

But she couldn't see anything. Just shrubs and boulders cast in silhouette by the bright light of the explosion.

That couldn't be right. She could see the missiles from what she assumed were dozens and dozens of things scattered across the UN building's grounds, but she could not for the life of her find their source. Every time she caught a muzzle flash out of the corner of her eye and turned, the enemy was gone.

Looks like they're cloaked, Pepper remembered suddenly, a quick jolt of fear tightening her chest as she recalled Natasha's words. She couldn't see the enemy because, for all intents and purposes, it wasn't there. It was cloaked. Blending in with its surroundings using the perfect camouflage…

No, Pepper thought, twisting to chase after a flicker in her peripheral vision. Not perfect. She could see them. At least, Pepper could see something…. There. Movement. Then…there, again. It looked like the world itself was shimmering. Like heat rising off the pavement on a hot day.

The technology was flawed. Whatever was using it.

"What are they?" Pepper asked.

"Hammerdrones," Natasha replied, her tone flat. Happy had finally thrown the Lexus into an open parking spot and killed the engine. The portable device sat on the seat between Natasha and Pepper, throwing a faint blue glow onto the leather. She grabbed it and put her hand on the door. "Happy, keep the lights—"

"Hammerdrones?" Pepper cut in, whipping around to face Natasha. Cold shock rushed over her, making her fingers and toes tingle. "But…we destroyed all the drones! Last year, after the Expo! I was there!"

Natasha didn't answer. Instead, she lifted her gaze and gave Pepper that look – that sympathetic, I-wish-I-could-tell-you-but-it's-kinda-against-all -my-standing-orders look.

Pepper had seen it before, more times than she cared to count.

She bit back a sigh. She got it. Honestly, she did. SHIELD was a top-secret organization, so closeted and protected that she was sure that three-fourths of the President's Cabinet didn't even know about it. To gain access to any kind of information the organization had to offer, you needed security clearances.

Security clearance she didn't have because she was a civilian, not an agent.

But whether SHIELD liked it or not, Pepper was involved with their business. She was in charge of managing Tony Stark, and lately, that included his superhero lifestyle. When SHIELD needed him to deal with a problem, she was the one stuck clearing his schedule and dealing with the fallout of his absence.

Right now, all she wanted to know was how – a year after putting Justin Hammer behind bars and making sure every little bit, piece, and scrap of Hammerdrone from the Stark Expo had been handed over to SHIELD to dispose of – she had come face to face with a small army of his drones.

And they wouldn't even tell her that.

Pepper opened her mouth to say so, but Happy beat her to the punch, saying, "Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on!"

Silence filled the car. Pepper stared, open-mouthed, from Happy to Natasha and back again as the tension in the Lexus grew thicker and heavier. Happy's jaw was tightly clenched and his knuckles were white.

Of course, Pepper realized. Happy knew even less about what was going on than she did. She'd at least had the chance to talk to and interact with a number of SHIELD agents, and could usually sense when things were likely to go wrong. But Happy…

It wasn't fair.

His voice surprisingly soft, Happy continued, "I know you're smart and you can probably handle this, Agent Romanov. But I'm not going to leave you behind." He paused to take a breath. "So you can let us know what's going on and let us help if we can, or you can stay right here, where I know it's safer for all of us."

Natasha stayed silent. Pepper wondered if the Bluetooth device in her ear was sensitive enough to pick up background chatter, and, if it could, whether her boss was going to give her permission to speak.

Finally, glancing at both of them, Natasha nodded. Setting her fingers back to flying over the tablet, she explained "SHIELD has been keeping tabs on this one terrorist organization for a few years now. They go by Medusa."

Medusa? Pepper thought. She'd heard of them – not long ago TIME Magazine had done an in-depth piece on the ten biggest non-Al Qaeda threats to the United States. Medusa – described as a multinational terrorist organization with branches in every country in the world – had been high on that list. Unlike most terrorist organizations, however, it seemed to have no primary goal, leading some of the analysts interviewed in the article to speculate that Medusa wasn't any more than a branch itself.

"They got copies of the designs for Hammer's drones. They've been mass-producing them for months. We found and destroyed one of their manufacturing plants, but have so far failed to locate the others." Natasha glanced outside. "We guessed that Medusa was working on assembling an army of these drones."

"Why?" Happy asked.

"They want a war."

As if on cue, Tony zipped by overhead, pursued by more than a dozen Hammerdrones. They opened fire, and Pepper bit back a cry as Tony got hit. His flight pattern faltered, and one of the small repulsor cannons mounted to the suit's shoulders flew off, having been knocked off in the blast. The cannon, glinting red and gold in the scant light still available, hit the ground and clattered across the debris-riddled parking lot towards a row of shelled out cars. It stopped just short of an ugly yellow Hummer.

"You said there were two hundred units earlier. You mean two hundred Hammerdrones." When Natasha didn't immediately reply, Pepper went on, "And Tony is fighting against all of them by himself."

"Yes. Which is why I need to get out there and help." Natasha cracked the door slowly, watching Tony through the windshield as he circled back towards the ruins of the UN building. Pepper tried to count the drones still on his tail, but it was getting darker – the night's predict storm starting to move in – and the telltale shimmer was getting even harder to see.

"How're you going to beat something you can't see?" Happy asked.

Natasha smiled. "Make it visible."

Then she was gone, out of the car and across the grounds towards the fight.

Pepper closed her eyes again. The sounds of the battle raging outside had all but faded into white noise while Natasha had been talking. Now that she was gone, the sounds had come back to the forefront of her mind.

Tony was out there, fighting. Those noises were his noises. It killed her to stay here and see Tony fight against such odds, but Pepper knew she'd lose it completely if she were trapped back in the city.

"Happy?" Pepper said. Her voice sounded thick, even to her own ears.

"Yes, Boss?"

"We're not going back to the city." Slowly, quietly, Pepper put her hand on the door latch.

"Of course not, Boss."

Pepper swallowed. "We're going to help." With that, she pulled on the latch, shoved open the door, and dashed out of the car.

She knew it was stupid. She was a civilian with no training. Happy had his boxing career behind him, but his injuries and new lifestyle had slowed him considerably. Neither of them had any weapons of any kind.

But Pepper refused to sit this battle out. She was tired of doing nothing. She'd find a way to help, even if it meant pointing out the location of the few shimmering drones she could spot.

Circling around the back of the Lexus, she headed down the slight incline towards Natasha and the Hammerdrone, keeping her head low and her hands up to shield herself. One of her heels broke as she ran, and Pepper stumbled, but somehow managed not to fall. She skidded to a halt beside the fallen Hammerdrone, ducking to use it as cover. Happy fell in just a few steps behind her.

Natasha looked at them both with a fierce, angry look in her eyes, but before she could say or do anything to try and force Happy and Pepper back to the Lexus, Pepper said, "You, really, really need to stop pretending Happy and I aren't involved with this mess. Like it or not, we are. Stop letting us be a distraction – let us help."

Natasha grimaced. It probably went against all her training, experience, and standing orders, but she said, "Fine. Just…keep an eye on Tony for me. He's been keeping them busy, but…" Natasha sore softly.

Happy asked, "What're you doing?"

Natasha made a noise of frustration low in her throat and set her fingers flying over the tablet again, hitting keys almost as soon as they appeared on the screen. "Agent Matthews and her team designed a program for us that should help knock out the drone's cloaking software. I just have to install it." Natasha glanced back over her shoulder, checking her progress, then went back to her tablet and the thick line of cords running from it to the open panel at the back of the drone's head. "Once that's done, I'm going to try to help Jarvis patch into the drones."

"Jarvis?" Pepper asked. The wind had picked up and if she looked out west, she could just see the first flickers of lightning looming on the horizon.

"Yes."

Tony flashed by again. Pepper turned just in time to see him get hit and bit back a cry as he faltered, then fell out of the sky. He tumbled end over end, hitting the dirt hard. Pepper lost sight of him behind the parked cars.

She stepped forward, not really wanting to leave the relative safety of the fallen drone, but needing to see where Tony had landed and if he was okay.

Slowly, Tony rose from behind the cars. His gaze was fixed on a point back across the parking lot. Pepper followed his line of sight, but couldn't find what he was looking at.

Then the drone opened fire and Tony dodged, leaping sideways. Rolling out of his dodge, Tony launched a counter-attack, using small missiles mounted to his arms. The drone fell, hit hard, and the camouflage flickered off.

Pepper looked back at Tony – and spotted a different tell-tale shimmer moving his way. Several. Her heart skipped and she quickly counted the drones. There were half a dozen there, at least.

And Tony was looking the wrong way.

Tony! Pepper cried, but the sound died in her throat. If she called to him, he'd turn to her – and still be looking the wrong way.

So she couldn't call out him. But she couldn't just stand there, either. Tony was alone. Fighting without anyone – not Hawkeye, not Banner, not Captain America, not even Agent Coulson – there to help. Natasha was doing all she could, but until she started making progress…

Pepper's mind was flying over her options, which were limited at best. She had no weapons of any kind, and charging straight for at least a half-dozen massive, cloaked, heavily armed Hammerdrones without a weapon seemed suicidal no matter how much she tried to justify it. She looked around, trying to think of something, and her gaze fell on the ugly yellow Hummer in the parking lot.

Oh.

The repulsor cannon.

Oh, if she lived through this, Tony would be proud.

"Happy?" Pepper asked. Her voice was short. "Can you see them?"

"The drones?"

"Yes." She quickly glanced over at her shoulder.

Happy looked at Pepper in confusion, as though he could sense she was about to do something, but couldn't quite guess what that something was. "Yeah. Not well, but yeah."

"Good. You keep a lookout for Natasha."

Natasha and Happy both looked up then, mirroring expressions of confusion written in every line of their faces. "Where're you going?"

"To save Tony!" Anger burning like a hot fire in her gut, Pepper kicked off her useless, broken heels, sending the silver, glittery shoes flying. One hit the ground and tumbled into a nearby pond with a splash that was barely audible over the sounds of battle. Next, Pepper grabbed the hem of her dress in both hands and pulled, tearing the fabric up along her thigh as far as she was comfortable going.

Now she could move.

"What're you doing?" Happy called. "Pepper!"

Pepper sprinted towards the parking lot – and fallen cannon. Her bare feet protested sharply when she hit the asphalt, but Pepper pushed through the pain and reached the cannon in seconds. She yanked the gun off the ground and hefted it into her arms, surprised finding it lightweight and balanced.

Tony had never shown her how to fire it, exactly, but she'd seen him test it and knew it was possible to use it without the suit. After a short, frantic search, her hands found the pressure-sensitive trigger on the side and Pepper felt it warm under her fingers as the cannon started to charge. Shifting the way the cannon sat in her arms, she aimed, carefully tracking the Hammerdrones' shimmering movement across the field.

The cannon clicked. It was fully charged.

With a loud, primal yell that came from somewhere deep within her, Pepper took quick aim with the cannon and fired. It responded easily to the change in pressure under her fingers, sending a single, massive shot across the field. The recoil from the cannon was minimal but still knocked her back. Pepper closed her eyes instinctively against it.

The blast was massive. Larger than she'd anticipated. But it was accurate, landing just behind the front line of drones. She saw Tony's silhouette throw up his arm to shield his face from the force of the explosion.

As soon as darkness fell again, Pepper ran.

Before she knew it she was sliding into place just behind Tony.

"Pepper?!" Tony yelled, popping open the faceplate of his helmet.

"Yes, Pepper!" Pepper shouted back over her shoulder, her voice high and shrill. She felt the cannon click again. She raised it, quickly scanning the grounds for any drones. She didn't see any, but that didn't mean they weren't there. "I'm here to cover you!"

Tony glanced down at the cannon in her hands. "That was you?!"

"Yes, that was me!"

Tony made a few noises, like he was trying to find the words to either mock or chastise her, but then Jarvis said something and Tony turned to take aim at another drone.

When it was dispatched, its camouflage flickering off, he said, "That saved my life!"

"Shocking, isn't it?"

"Go back!"

"No!" Pepper cried. "You need me!"

"I need you alive!"

"And I need you alive!"

"Pepper—"

Then Pepper saw something out of the corner of her eye: a small, electric blue glow sliding along the horizon. Momentarily confused, she turned to look at it.

A bolt of lightning flashed overhead. The storm was moving in faster. But the light quickly cast a purple-white pallor over the grounds, and Pepper could see the familiar shape of a large Hammerdrone where the blue light was. In fact, the light moved as the drone did.

Of course. The program Agent Matthews and her team had designed didn't just disable the drones' cloaking technology – it used the LEDs to paint a nice, bright, blue target on each and every one.

"You see that?" Pepper called to Tony.

"Yep!"

This time, when Pepper raised the cannon and fired, she knew right what she was aiming at. She rained shots down on the drones advancing on her while Tony quickly dispatched the handful of drones between them and Natasha and Happy.

Pepper felt something catch in her throat. Her blood rushed in her ears. Was this what it was always like? The frenzied rush of adrenaline seemed to push her beyond anger and fear and stress and into a state where none of those emotions mattered. She was hyper-aware. It was still too dark to see much when there was no bolt of lightning to light up the grounds, but she still felt like she could see everything she needed to see. Her eyes hurt from it. She didn't just want to yell, she wanted to scream. She didn't just want to shoot the drones, she wanted to tear them apart with her bare hands, then beat every other drone that got in her way with the remnants of its fallen brethren.

"How much longer?" she yelled.

"Dunno!" Tony replied. "A few more minutes!" He fired off a few more shots and two drones fell out of the sky. One of them landed heavily on the yellow Hummer.

"Well, tell him to hurry it up!"

"We're doing what we can!" Tony paused just long enough to take out a drone that had been advancing, unknown, on Natasha.

The drones had seemed to realize – however that was possible – that they were visible now. They'd stepped up their attempts, and Pepper could see them all gathering together a few hundred yards before her. Rows and rows of drones, the last remaining…what, fifty? Seventy-five?

It was a big number regardless.

"Tony!" Pepper cried, just as the drones all opened fire at once, launching several massive volleys of everything they had.

Tony reacted quickly, grabbing Pepper and throwing her around behind him. He countered the missiles and mortar shells, at least, with a powerful volley of his own. The two volleys met halfway, filling the air with more noise and heat than Pepper had ever known before in her life. The few missiles that made it through the blasts sailed by, hitting the ground and sending dirt and landscaping flying.

Pepper yelled. The noise was deafening. She could feel debris and water – rainwater or a busted main, she couldn't tell – raining down on her. Some of it was hot, searing her skin. Slowly, though, the noises faded, and Pepper finally looked up. A flash of lightning lit up the grounds.

The drones were frozen. Their guns were quiet. A strangely serene calm settled over the grounds.

"Jarvis?" Tony called. He held out an arm to keep Pepper from creeping out from behind him. "You got 'em?" He paused as Jarvis answered. "I don't know. Wave. Make 'em wave."

The drones waved in unison. Jarvis was in full control of them.

Pepper felt relief course through her. One by one her muscles loosened, the tension and adrenaline seeping from them. Her fingers slackened on the gun, not enough to drop it, but enough that she was no longer clutching it so tightly.

She closed her eyes.

They'd done it. Slowly, Pepper sank onto the ground. Her evening dress was a mess, ripped and muddy and dappled with small burns from the hot ash – but it was nothing compared to her feet. They were torn and bloody, and with the adrenaline slowly fading from her systems they were starting to throb angrily at her.

Tony sat down beside her.

"That was…uh…" he began.

Pepper chuckled. "That was something." She was suddenly too tired for good words.

Happy and Natasha rushed over. Natasha had a hand pressed to her ear and stopped short, but Happy kept coming.

"Pepper!" He dropped to his knees on her other side. "Are you okay?"

"She's fine," Tony said, waving Happy off. "She was amazing."

The nervous, relieved laughter bubbled up in Pepper's throat again. She raised her hands, fingers spread wide. "Just don't expect me to do that ever, ever again."

"Really? This was a one-night only show? My back was to you half the time. I didn't even get to see what you were doing!"

"Not ever."

Tony leaned back, a smile forming on his lips. "What if I build you a suit?"

"No." Pepper shook her head. "Absolutely not."

"Come on, you've never even thought about how much fun it would be? We could go flying. You and me, alone in the skies…"

Pepper pressed the heel of her palm against her forehead. "No, Tony."

He smiled.

Pepper heard tires crunching and looked up towards the parking lot. SHIELD cars were pulling into the grounds by the dozens. Black SUVs of every make and model pulled into the trashed drive and the scarred parking lot. Agents swarmed out of the SUVs and dispersed, gathering around the fallen drones, picking through debris, carrying medical supplies to anyone who needed something as simple as a Band-Aid.

Coulson approached them.

"Took you long enough," Tony said in greeting.

Coulson dipped his head. "There was an incident. We got held up. Surely you understand."

"Bet it didn't beat this one."

"Ours involved giant robots."

"So did ours. Or did you miss the whole Hammerdrone army thing?"

Coulson smiled. "Ours were bigger." He glanced past Tony and Pepper. "Excuse me."

Tony frowned. He peered after Coulson. "Was she joking? I don't know if he was joking."

Pepper sighed. Never a dull day with Mr. Stark.

She wondered distantly if the fool that invited Tony to the evening's mixer regretted it yet.

Hi, everyone! My apologies for my long absence. Alas, I'm not technically back yet. This is an old fic, written for a challenge on LJ called Girl Saves Boy. I had meant to go back and rewrite parts of it before posting it here, but then realized that it does actually make a fair amount of sense even as-is, and with Iron Man 3 coming out soon this might be a good way for me to celebrate and do my own version of leading in without being obnoxious about it.

Thanks for reading!