"I'm not done yet," Tony pointed out. "I know what I'm doing. This is just a prototype, anyways. Not combat-ready."

Lea rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, fine," she grumbled. "Just trying to be helpful."

Tony didn't reply to that. After a moment, though, he did speak.

"Not everyone would have caught that, you know."

Instead of brushing it off, as she normally would have done, Lea paused and looked at him.

"I guess I've gotten used to how your tech works."

"Faster than anyone else I've met," Tony commented. "What is it, from your Extremis? That could be damn useful."

"Yeah." Lea smiled and turned a bit pink. She wasn't used to getting compliments. "It lets me adapt to new technology pretty quickly, and I'm good with coding and building stuff. And hacking, which you already knew."

"Fun stuff," Tony replied. "I know a lot of people who would pay good money for that. Not me, of course, I'm already that good, but other people."

Lea snorted. "Study my blood long enough and you'll probably figure out how to replicate it," she said with a careless shrug.

"I know most of the original formula already," Tony replied. "Besides, Brucie's better at biological stuff, I get bored too quick and go back to my tech."

"Tech is better," Lea agreed. "People are crazy, tech is better."

"Agreed," Tony replied. He glanced at her. He hadn't realized quite how much they actually agreed on.

Lea seemed to come to the same conclusion and shifted uncomfortably. Whoops. That was a little odd for them; they normally clashed. She pushed her chair back.

"I'm gonna go poke around some more."

"Don't break anything," Tony said. "That's Dummy's job and he's in New York, so there should be no broken things this trip."

Lea snorted. "Yeah, yeah, I'll try to keep everything unbroken."

But that didn't mean she wouldn't take something apart if she got her hands on it.

Tony waved her off, going back to his prototypes again. He was trying to see if he could make a sort of emergency repulsor panel that would work without the suit. It was an interesting concept, if he could make it work.

Lea got her hands on an old Arc reactor and took it apart, examining it thoroughly. Well, that explained a lot about the suit. Whistling softly, she set it off to the side, back in one piece again, before looking around for something else to take apart.

Tony had noticed her fiddling with the old Arc, but instead of blowing up like he would have anyone else, he waited to see what she would do. When she set it aside, in one piece, he had to put down what he was doing to check the Arc over real quick.

"How'd you do that?" he asked. "I'm the only one who knows how to build an Arc, not even Brucie knows, even though I've shown him the specs for it, and I'm damn sure you've never seen the specs, I keep those locked down tighter than Fury's eyepatch." He looked at her.

Lea blinked. "I fiddled," she said. "What, you've never taken something apart just to take it apart and see how it works?" She snorted, because she knew he did. She'd seen him do that. "Besides, it makes sense if you think a little crazy, which you do."

"I think more than a little crazy, and that's not the point," Tony said. "Nobody has ever been able to figure out how to even get the outer casing off, and some people have tried before. How did you do it?"

"You know how I did it." Lea grinned, because yes, she could have a smart mouth at times. "I looked at it, and I compared it to your other designs that I've seen, studied it for a minute, and popped it off." She shrugged. No big deal.

Tony just looked at her incredulously and made a mental note to see about changing the outer design of the Arc.

"Don't do it again," he said finally.

Lea frowned. "Look, if I did something I wasn't supposed to, I'm sorry. I was just curious."

"Yeah, and the last person who was 'curious' about the Arc-- you know what, never mind, just don't do it again." Tony looked at her, and then went back to his work.

Lea shrugged and went to go find other things to poke at. But after a while she got bored and headed outside instead.

Tony stayed in the workshop with his prototypes until well after dark, only ordering pizza in when Jarvis prompted him to and only then because the AI reminded him he had a guest to look after. Otherwise he would have just kept working.