The blindfold smelled expensive. It was a Soft fabric with no rough edges. Tony Stark did nothing halfway, not even kidnapping his girlfriend for quality time.
"Just so we are clear," Yelena said calmly. "If this ends with a surprise orchestra, I will throw you into the ocean."
Tony guided her forward, boots crunching faintly underfoot. "Wow. No trust. I am wounded."
"I kissed you before you kidnapped me," she replied. "So clearly I trust you enough."
He stopped her with a gentle hand on her back. The wind was stronger here. Salt in the air. She could hear waves far below.
"Alright," Tony said. "Moment of truth."
He reached up and untied the blindfold.
Yelena blinked once as the nanites in her eyes scanned the surroundings.
Then she smiled dangerously.
The island stretched out before them like a weapons designer's fever dream. Black sand beaches reinforced with kinetic plating. Dense jungle sections broken up by steel bunkers. Automated turrets are hidden all over the place. Humanoid robots patrolled in coordinated formations. Further inland, something huge moved. A giant mech, warming up like it had an attitude problem.
Her smile widened.
"…You remembered," she said softly.
Tony watched her face, clearly pleased with himself. "I figured dinner and a movie were getting repetitive. Also you looked bored the last time we tried fine dining, even though it was your idea."
"I thought it'd be fun. But they keep bringing out weird stuff and raw fish with foams and shit. So, I stabbed a chef with a breadstick," she said. "That was fun."
Tony pointed to the island and said, "So, shall we begin our date night? We'll have a live fire course with new combat systems. The adaptive AI will be in charge. Most rounds are non-lethal, but there are some lethal options if you press the red buttons. You know, just a little romance."
Yelena cracked her neck. Nanites rippled over her skin as her combat suit formed seamlessly around her.
"You," she said, pointing at him, "are the best bad influence I have ever had."
Tony's armor deployed around him in a smooth cascade of red and gold. He was using the classic mode. "That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."
The AI noticed them.
Alarms howled. Turrets snapped toward the shoreline. The first wave of drones lifted from concealed bays, blades whining as they surged forward.
Yelena did not wait for instructions.
She sprinted straight into hell.
First, she locked onto the oncoming drones.
The nanites around her shoulder shifted and multiple micro missiles shot out, arcing low before targeting the drones. They exploded upon contact. The explosions tore through the first drone wave in a chain of fire and shrapnel. Burning metal rained into the surf.
She laughed.
"YES."
Tony took off after her, repulsors flaring. "I am taking that as a positive reaction."
Turrets opened fire. Blue energy bolts stitched across the sand. Yelena slid into a roll, came up on one knee, and fired a compact explosive directly into a bunker slit.
The bunker ceased to exist.
Debris thundered into the jungle. Shockwaves rippled through the trees.
Tony whistled. "You are really in a good mood tonight."
He shot multiple repulsor blasts, taking down a couple of stray drones and turrets.
"Explosions help me process emotions," she shouted back, vaulting over a fallen robot and planting a charge on its torso. She kicked it toward an incoming patrol and detonated it midair.
The blast flattened the patrol and took out two turrets behind them.
Tony redirected power to the shields as the explosion escalated. Humanoid units poured from hidden doors. Heavy walkers emerged from the treeline. Somewhere deeper inland, the giant mech powered up fully, eyes glowing like it had been waiting all day for this.
Yelena saw it and pointed.
"Oh, I want that one."
Tony grinned inside his helmet. "That is the final boss."
"Good," she said. "I would have been disappointed."
"Behind you," Tony yelled, pulling Yelena down as an electro blast zoomed where her head was. He fired a laser beam, piercing through the stealth turret.
They fought side by side, back to back at times, covering each other without thinking. Tony adapted systems on the fly, countering tactics as the robots learned. Yelena broke patterns violently, unpredictably, joyfully. She used terrain, debris, and momentum.
At one point, she grabbed a fallen turret, swung it like a club, and used it to bat a drone out of the sky before hurling it into a group of incoming units and blowing it apart.
"Haha! Take that," Yelena yelled with a large grin.
Tony stared for half a second too long and took a hit to the shoulder.
"Eyes up, lover boy," she called. "I am busy being magnificent."
The giant mech finally moved out of its zone.
"Now we are talking," Yelena cracked her knuckles.
The ground changed as the mech stepped forward.
Each footfall compressed the black sand into glassy plates, kinetic dampeners flaring blue beneath its weight. It stood taller than the treeline, plated in overlapping armor slabs that rotated and locked with every movement. Missile racks unfolded along its shoulders. Rail cannons slid into position along its arms. Its core glowed a red hue.
Yelena tilted her head, studying it like a puzzle she intended to solve with excessive force.
"Oh," she said pleasantly. "You are ugly."
The mech responded by firing.
The first salvo turned the beach into a storm of plasma and shrapnel. Tony boosted upward, shields flaring as he intercepted part of the barrage. The rest hit the sand where Yelena had been standing.
Her suit reacted before conscious thought. Nanites hardened around her legs and launched her sideways in a burst of compressed force. She hit a half-collapsed bunker wall, ran three steps vertically, and vaulted onto a wrecked walker.
From midair, she fired.
Micro rail darts screamed out of her forearms, punching clean through one of the mech's knee joints. The armor buckled inward. Hydraulic fluid sprayed like blood.
The mech staggered but did not fall.
It adapted and deployed countermeasures. Defensive fields rippled across its surface. Targeting systems locked onto her position with terrifying speed.
Tony fired a unibeam into its chest. The beam splashed against the shield, carving a glowing scar but not breaking through.
"Haha," Tony laughed. "See that. It can take 40% unibeam just like that. And why aren't you flying?"
"It's more fun to do it personally instead of flying and shooting," Yelena replied, already moving again. "And I love a little cardio."
She landed hard, rolled, and slammed her palm into the sand.
The suit answered.
From her back, segmented launchers unfolded like mechanical wings. She did not look back. She simply pointed.
"Everything," she said.
The launchers roared.
High-yield explosives, shaped charges, EMP spikes, and armor-cracking penetrators launched in overlapping spirals. Some detonated on impact. Others burrowed before exploding. The EMP wave flickered across the mech's systems, forcing a momentary stutter.
A moment was all she needed.
Yelena sprinted straight at it.
The mech raised an arm. A rail cannon charged and the air rippled around it.
"I got a bigger one," Yelena said as she activated the 100% Uni Beam.
The rail cannon fired.
The round screamed through the air like a thunderbolt, compressing space ahead of it, sand lifting in a rippling shockwave as it tore forward. Any conventional target would have been erased.
The uni beam ignited.
A bright white light burst from her chest in a focused beam. It was so bright that it covered the battlefield, and so thick that it distorted the air around it. The rail round struck the light directly and did not explode. It simply vanished, broken apart at the atomic level before it could finish making a sound.
The beam struck the mech square in the torso.
Armor plates glowed, then ran like wax. Defensive fields collapsed in layers. The mech tried to compensate, rerouting power, locking joints, and deploying emergency counterfields, but it wasn't enough to stop a 100% Uni Beam.
The beam punched through.
The chest cavity ruptured in a violent bloom of light and molten metal. Internal reactors went critical in sequence, not all at once, but cascading, like a system desperately trying to shut down while already dying.
Yelena kept the beam on for two more seconds.
Just to be sure.
Then she cut it.
The mech stood there for a heartbeat before hitting sand and detonating from the inside out. Fire and shrapnel roared skyward. The shockwave rolled across the beach, flattening wreckage, knocking over trees, and turning sand into glass in a widening ring.
It looked like a giant firework.
Tony flew down before Yelena and both retracted their masks before Yelena jumped into his arms. She kissed him hard, fast, and unapologetically.
"That," she said breathlessly when she pulled back, "was better than dessert."
Tony laughed. "I knew skipping reservations was the right call."
She dropped back to the sand, boots crunching on glassy black shards, and spread her arms wide like she wanted to take in the whole ruined island.
"Look at this place," she said. "You built me a murder playground."
"I like to call it a therapeutic environment," Tony said. "It helps with stress relief, team bonding, and light exercise."
She glanced at him sideways. "So... You seen anything different about Janet and Wanda? I think they like you." She kicked a chunk of metal into the air.
"Yeah, they keep giving me hints and all..." Tony said with a sigh as he looked up at the sky. "What do you think?"
"Well, we already are in a complicated relationship... So, what could go wrong with two more? You should talk to them. Oh, and to Pepper too. I heard her rubbing one off while mumbling your name in her office and her room like over forty times in the last four months... Like she keeps going at it," Yelena said casually.
"You spying on her?" He asked, with a raised eyebrow.
"I don't know what you are talking about," Yelena tried to avoid the conversation. "I'm hungry. Let's go and eat." She activated her repulsor and flew toward the Horizon Island.
"Haaa... Nat, Yelena, Sue, Raven and now Janet, Wanda and Pepper. I love my life," Tony mumbled to himself before flying behind Yelena.
...
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