"Good morning Mr. Stark," George said from his security desk, as Tony Stark walked in.

Tony glowered a bit, "You know I prefer a less formal greeting."

"I do indeed, Tony. But I greet everyone that way when they first come in, from then on I address them they way they wish to be addressed."

"So, how many industrious employees have beat me to work this morning?"

"That depends upon what mean by work. We have the sweaty six playing their weekly basketball game, Doug is playing blind chess against 3 members of his team again. Oh and he's doing this mornings New York Times crossword puzzle in pen while doing it. Johnson has been here all night doing some research in Lab 2. Another five are having coffee and offering tips to three chess players. And finally Mr. Potts is in his office. So really only one has beat you to work."

"Damn," Tony muttered.

George stifled a laugh, "Another salad for lunch?"

"Yes, he said disgustingly, "Damn rabbit food. Well have a good day George."

Tony stalked his way down to his offices. He had two here, one to do work in, and one to meet with people in. He went into his work office and a moment later Peter Potts walked in. "Good morning Peter."

"Good morning Tony. I have your schedule for today."

"Anything exciting on it?"

"Colonel Rhodes is scheduled at nine AM for another day of test flights of the Mark VI armor."

At the mention of the Armor, Tony glanced up at the only artwork on the walls, the earliest was a childish drawing of a medieval knight in olive drab armor with US Army insignia on it. They progressed on through a montage of fanciful drawings of armor he had done through elementary and high school. Then a technical drawing and picture of the exoskeleton he had built in college. These were followed by photos of the five prototype suits Stark Industries had built. None of them had been successful.

"Good, I can't wait to see what he can get it to do today. Also, how is the Green Stone Project coming?"

Peter tapped a few keys on his computer, "Their last update shows no change. They are sure that it has a large potential to produce energy, but they have no idea how to access it."

"Good, or rather not good, but I have another job for them. Have one of them finish a final report, while the others start on a new project. I want them to begin a study on the new Metahumans. Two purposes; one a database of all known metahumans, along with best estimates of what they can do, and to what extent. Second determine how much energy they are producing and where this energy is coming from. All of this is to only be stored on the internal server, and I will provide a list of people with access to the files."

Peter stood speechless for a moment, this was the last thing he had expected. Tony had scoffed at the idea of metahumans not long after Jade had made her announcement. "Um, yes. Uh, what is the purpose of this?"

"A couple, including if we can tap the power source, we may be able to power the suit. Also, while I haven't been paying that much attention, I assume that there have been some cases of the police facing off against them. I want to see if we can supply the police and military with the necessary weaponry to fight them."

"Anything else?"

"No. Yes, I don't want the research team to do any research on the real identities of who these metahumans are. Store all the information under either the name they use, or a suitable identifier. I need to start working, give me a warning before I am to meet with Col. Rhodes."

With that, Peter disappeared back into his office and began translating Tony's verbal orders into full fledged written orders. Tony on the other hand began going over the power consumption of the current Mk VI Armor. The last tests had peaked at over fifty megawatts. Several hours later, Peter buzzed him.

Tony walked into Lab 4 to see Randall Sinclair setting up several sensors for the next test flight. "Hello Rhodey, how's it going?"

"Tony. It's going OK, but I think this is going to be the last test flight, at least for me. Unless you can do something about the power consumption, the Military just won't be interested."

"I've been waiting for this. I'm rather surprised that you have stayed with it this long."

"I've been, well, slightly exaggerating the possibilities of the suit," he said blushing slightly, not that anyone noticed.

"Oh?" Randall asked.

"Even with the power tether, and the limited space, flying this thing is fun. More fun than anything I've flown."

Tony, Randall, and several others watched and monitored the test flight for the couple hours that it ran. Everything went fine, except when Col. Rhodes attempted a hand stand while flying. That garnered a laugh from everyone.

With the testing over, Col. Rhodes stomped over in the gold and red suit. The gold was the natural color of the mesh suit and the red of the other pieces just went well with the gold. "Rhodey, how come you are the only person that has to stomp their way around in that suit?"

He reached up and removed the helmet, "It's almost as fun stomping around in as it is flying."

They discussed the tests while Col. Rhodes took off the armor. He had put the suit through every maneuver he could think of while tethered by a large power cord. Finally Col. Rhodes asked the question he had avoided the whole time he was testing the suit, "So Tony, exactly where are you getting the power to run that suit?"

Tony looked at him and said deadpan, "I have a nuclear reactor in the basement." Then Tony broke into a big grin.

Col. Rhodes got a shocked looked on his face, then paused and let out a forced chuckle, "Uh, forget I asked."

Their group broke up as lunch time approached, Tony looking a bit disappointed as he remembered the salad he was having thanks to Peter beating him to work this morning. 'Ah well,' he thought, 'it probably is better than whatever I would have bothered to get. Assuming I got anything at all.'

*****

Tony was looking over a package sitting on his desk. Two DVDs in crystal cases, actually he got something like this fairly regularly, usually from sort of crackpot that wanted his ideas paid for. His father had received similar things and the standard then was to throw them out unlooked at. Tony had often wondered what his father had missed out on.

Tony changed the policy, he had a team look over every proposal. Most of the time, they were crackpot schemes for 'free energy' or 200 mpg gasoline engines or equally silly ideas. Sometimes though, a real proposal came through, and Tony had hired several of his employees from unsolicited proposals. All of the proposals were cataloged and kept on file, part of that teams job was to see if any of them actually showed up.

That brought him back to the DVDs on his desk. The team had viewed them and passed them on to him immediately. He put the disk labeled One into an isolated DVD player and pressed 'play.'

Snow was on the HD TV for a few moments and then it cleared. On the screen a stylized eye appeared. He recognized it, knowing it was the symbol used by the person identified as "Catwoman" in New York. The subtitles came up and followed the voiceover exactly.

"Hello Mr. Stark. I am Catwoman. I have some technology that may interest you. Please watch this DVD entirely. If you require further verification, have someone research the information online and with the second DVD. Since you are watching this, your computer technicians have informed you that there are no viruses on these DVDs. This is important. Many of the documents I reference are available on the second DVD."

(http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/23850/cat-s-cradle has the rest of the video.)

Tony leaned back and thought for a while. The tech offered would be worth a great deal, assuming it was real. But first he would have to verify that is was real.

It took a week or so, but he finally got back a report. From everything his people could tell, everything on the DVDs was legitimate. He thought long and hard about what to bid, the amount that won would be significant, but for the most part he didn't really want the tech. Most of it's uses were outside his business model, and the instant collapse of the structure, struck him as dangerous. Still he had to bid, there was a definite implication that other things would be up for auction in the future. So a bid big enough to look serious, but not big enough to win.

He had been spending too much time going over reports on metahumans. There was a limit to what could be gleaned from videos and eyewitness reports. There was obviously something providing the energy that these people were using, but without actually getting some scientific instruments near them, it wasn't possible to detect the energy.

In mid August he got a break through, or at least the possibility of a breakthrough. Randall had returned from his vacation with the news that he was a metahuman. He had even floated the idea of testing in front of him. Perhaps this would lead to the data he needed.

*****