'I really cannot take this anymore,' Pepper panted and looked at the explosions across the city. 'My body literally cannot handle the stress.'

James pulled Pepper to the side to calm her down and Tony resisted a roll of his eyes. Sue got to her feet and steadied herself, still feeling lightheaded. The dried blood felt uncomfortable on her lip and chin and the burn on her side stung ferociously. But at least some of her energy was back.

'What happened? One minute you were talking and the next minute, you weren't,' Tony said, the worry in his voice sticking out to Sue. She assumed he was referring to the moment over the earpiece.

'Same with you. I was talking and you just stopped replying.'

'I was fighting a very stocky Russian man!'

Sue held back a laugh at how Tony gestured to chaos of New York City beside him. Tony grew a smile as she let out a few giggles and he stared at her sweaty, blood-caked face. Despite the small scratches and tiredness her skin carried, she was still unbelievably beautiful. The way the city's lights created an orange hue against her complexion made her appear angel-like. Her long lashes sat touching the edges of her fringe that somehow remained perfect after all the flying and fighting she had been through.

'Well, I enjoyed being your fighting partner, today,' Sue joked. Tony opened his mouth to say something that he had been thinking about for a while, but stopped. It wasn't the time or place. They were both tired and far away from their homes that were across the country. There would be a better chance than this.

'Oh yeah?' he decided to say instead. 'As my sidekick?'

'Partner.'

'Well, I killed Ivan, not you.'

'Oh god, James helped you! I could've taken him!'

'But did you?'

'No! I did a lot today, okay? I didn't see you helping the police and protecting civilians.'

'Not usually my style. With the police, I mean. Anyway, lets talk clean-up of all this.'

'In your dreams, metal boy.'

'Invisible girl.'

---

Tony and Sue sat at a table as they waited for Nick Fury. Sue tried to stop the man-child next to her from grabbing the file that the director of SHIELD left there. But she didn't have to as Tony was stopped by Nick himself.

'I don't think I want you looking at that,' the man said and sat down in the chair with two other files in his hand. 'I'm not sure it pertains to you, anymore. Now, this on the other hand, is Agent Romanoff's assessment of you. Miss Storm, this is yours.'

'How come I get an assessment?' Sue asked as she took the file from Nick. 'I thought Natasha was only assessing Tony.'

'When she informed me of your abilities, I assigned her to keep an eye on you as well. Hope you don't mind.'

Sue displayed an unsure smile and Tony ignored the two while reading parts of his file to himself. He eventually started reading aloud to boost his own ego and Sue sat back in her chair to listen.

''Personality overview. Mr Stark displays compulsive behaviour.' In my own defence, that was last week.

'Prone to self-destructive tendencies.' I was dying. I mean, please, aren't we all?

'Textbook narcissism'? Agreed.

Okay, here it is. 'Recruitment assessment for Avenger Initiative. Iron Man? Yes.' I gotta think about it,' Tony read before closing the file and throwing it back on the table.

'Read on,' Nick insisted with an unimpressed look in his eye. Tony sighed and grabbed the file again, glancing to his right to see Sue sitting with her file closed and waiting to hear the rest.

''Tony Stark not... not recommended'? That doesn't make any sense. How can you approve me but not approve me?'

'Miss Storm,' Nick turned to Sue and hoped for some of his sanity to return. 'Please, have a read of yours.'

Sue cleared her throat and opened her own file. She saw a small picture of herself clipped to the papers with a paperclip as well as her basic information at the top. She read through silently before she got to the part about the personality overview and began reading aloud.

''Miss Storm displays level-headed behaviour and is a constructive asset when it comes to planning and teamwork',' Sue could feel the burn of Tony's stare on her side, but she continued reading in spite him. 'Her abilities will be a strong addition to the project. Recruitment assessment for Avenger Initiative. The Invisible Woman? Yes. Susan Storm... also yes.'

'Ah, you see,' Tony clapped his hands together and looked at Fury with a shrug. 'We're a package deal. A duo. A partnership. If you get her, you get me.'

Nick rolled his one visible eye and stood up from the table. He gave one look to Tony and a polite smile to Sue before he left the room. The two sat at the table together and Tony grabbed Sue's file that she had put down. Sue went to protest but chose to not bother as he read her information with a hand on his knee.

'It's like Romanoff is in love with you or something. What a suck up.'

≛≛≛

'The cloud is accelerating! We've got minutes until it hits, not hours!'

Reed Richards stood in the control room as he tried to shut the shields down around the ship. The cosmic storm he had thought would hit their position long after they were gone, was now outside the window. He looked up and saw the red and orange flares of energy fly through the abyss of space and head in their direction. The shields needed to be powered up before they could be closed, but there wasn't enough time.

'Reed!' Ben ran into the control room while zipping his silver bodysuit up. Reed had offered to take over the supervision of the controls while he took a deserved nap, but he was only half asleep when he heard Reed's panicked voice on the intercom. 'How is this possible?'

'I don't know!' Reed rushed. 'The acceleration was out of nowhere! We've now got a storm with the energy to power an entire powerplant heading straight for us.'

Sue was unaware of the impending chaos. She stood in the storage room that was filled with radioactive batteries that would be needed for powering the generators. Head to toe in protective gear that allowed her to be in the room for a limit of ten minutes, Sue carefully lifted a glowing battery from its case and lowered it into the chamber. Her blonde fringe stuck to her forehead from the sweat, the suit getting hot in the radioactive room.

'Sue!' Johnny Storm ran through the hall and pounded his fist on the door of the storage room. 'Sue! The storm! Its gonna hit in the next two minutes!'

Sue concentrated as she lowered the next battery, oblivious to her brother who pounded on the door. The man looked through the small window and saw the back of his younger sister in the protective suit. It was only by chance that Sue looked over shoulder and saw Johnny through the window, halting her actions.

'Johnny?' she said but all he saw was her lips move soundlessly. He forgot that the storage room was soundproofed.

'The storm, Sue! The storm...' Johnny saw it was no use. Sue's confused face made his heart sink and her effort to read his lips were futile.

Before Sue could make her way to the door and turn the lock, the cosmic storm hit the ship. Johnny flew out of view as the waves of fiery red ripped through the Marvel-1. The impact threw Sue across the small room and hit the wall, the waves radiating through the radiation suit at half capacity. The fatal energy was halted by the protective gear, but it couldn't stop the core emissions from getting through and sinking into Sue's skin.

---

The New York skyline was a warm blue and clouds drifted at a slow pace. Skyscrapers sat in their grey glory as Tony Stark flew in between them, heading for the Stark tower that was lit with clean, sustainable energy. The large name 'STARK' was plastered along its top balcony and stuck out against the mundane city. Tony's Iron Man suit flew over the main street before turning up to land on the landing strip that awaited his arrival. He touched down and let JARVIS activate the disassembling process as he walked. He reached the end of the strip and entered the open-plan kitchen and living room.

'Levels are holding steady... I think?' Pepper said as she stared at the screens. She sat in a white suit and skirt at the desk in the living room, watching the energy power from the pipe Tony had connected in the Atlantic Ocean.

'Of course, they are. I was directly involved,' Tony said with a confident smirk. 'A drink is in order after that.'

He made his way into the kitchen and grabbed a decanter of whiskey. Before he started to pour, Tony turned around to open the fridge for some ice, when the decanter lifted into the air and began to pour on its own. The crystal glass he grabbed from the cabinets above the sink filled with the liquor and Tony turned around with the ice tray in hand.

'Uh Excuse me?' he turned his head to the decanter that floated back down to sit on the counter. 'Ghosts don't like whiskey. It goes right through them.'

The filled crystal glass began moving away from Tony. He rolled his eyes and reached over to grab it, only to have Susan Storm appear with her fingers wrapped around the drink. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders and her long bangs, which she let grow from the short fringe she once had, brushed against her cheeks.

'Whiskey hardly goes through me,' Sue said and let Tony take the glass out of her now visible hand. She smirked as Tony gave her a look that said 'don't take my stuff' before she followed him over to Pepper.