affliction

eight

Beth's POV

"You needed me?"

Tony looks up from what he was doing. "Ah! Yes. You've been here a couple weeks now and have been training with Steve and I was wondering if you wanted to join Steve, Nat, and a few others on a mission."

"Huh? Seriously?"

She shrugs. "Well, yeah. You haven't tried to escape, you keep the complaints to a bare minimum, you haven't threatened anyone recently. I trust you."

"What's the mission?"

He smiled. "Well, I've been really stuck on this idea about how you help these women, so I may have gotten Steve to bring me your assassin woman phone and had all the calls answered by Pepper. A woman called yesterday about a man in the higher-ups harassing her, you know breaking into her house, threatening her, hitting her a few times, you know the speal. I did my research, got proof of everything, and you are going to get him tomorrow. Now you aren't allowed to kill him, we're doing it our way, understand?"

I can't even help myself. I run up to Tony and hug him. "Yes, I understand! Thank you, Tony. This means a lot to me. I've been so worried about the women who call me."

He pats me on the back and then lets go of the embrace. "Not gonna lie, kid. Thought you were gonna stab me for stealing your phone. I had a lot of fear running through my body when you just ran at me like that."

I laugh loudly. "Sorry."

He pats my shoulder. "All good. You can go back to whatever you were doing, sorry if I disturbed you."

I smiled a little. "Oh, no. I wasn't busy. What are you doing right now?"

He waves me over to look at what's on the other side of the table. "I'm trying to figure out what I can use to block some sensors out in Rhodey's suit. It started malfunctioning, so I figured if I just blocked these few things, then it can't cause any bigger problems before tomorrow and I can just fix it afterwards."

I look at it, then look around the lab. I walk over to a different table and grab two pieces off of a magnet strip. I make them the right size and them place them on either side of the sensors. "Done."

He looks down and sees the sensors aren't malfunctioning anymore. "What the hell did you do? I've been working on this all morning."

"Simple physics. The magnets have the rubber grip on one side. Rubber is an insulator and can't conduct electricity. The sensors work by electricity. So, the rubber will stop the flow of it from one sensor to the other. Plus, them being magnets, it keeps them pulling towards each-other so they won't move for the time being."

He looks down at it and stares at me. "How do you know all of that?"

I smiled. "Wanna know a secret?"

He makes a face. "Uh, yah. Tell me."

I whisper. "I went to college."

He eyes widen. "Wait, what? How did you go to college and still be in no databases?"

I shrug. "I'm very persuasive."

He squints. "Which college?"

I smile. "NC State, baby."

He nods. "Ahhh, a STEM school. That makes lots of sense. Alright, run along now before you take over my job and put me out of business."

I laugh and begin to walk out of the room. "Alright, well if you need anymore help, you know where to find me. I was a calculus tutor, too. Aced all 3 of them."