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₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Stark Tower II: Private Conference Room # 137
Characters: Sylvia Storm & Pete Stark


I think this is making me look kind of gay… Petre Stark dropped her small shoulders down and looked around the private room with pursed lips. She had a table for two set up with a deep burgundy cloth and a bottle of non-alcoholic Champaign in a wine-cooler on the table, she took off her jacket and lay it over the back of the chair she planned to sit in. The place looked set up by her father for a very fancy date and Petre had been so into impressing the daughter of Johnny Storm when she arrived that the thought of looking like she was hitting on the other girl had not occurred until this moment.

“God dammit…” Pete hissed under her breath. She rubbed one hand down the length of her cybernetic arm, gray and a matte silver. She had changed it out over the years but had it, one way or another, since seven years old. The Stark model was on the cutting edge and could feel pressure, heat, cold, and an array of sensations. The delay time was drastically cut down, where she didn’t notice it but through her fathers extremis he was always finding small imperfections.

It doesn’t matter, I need to impress her no matter what I make myself look like, Pete fingered the wine glass by a plate not yet holding food. The server she had hired to cater their meal would come in after they were settled down. I’ve managed to do nothing but miss the mark so far, as Papa so supportively pointed out… I wonder I- that’s the door! She turned towards the noise. Keeping one hand on the side of the chair, Pete leaned back in a cool relaxed way trying to keep everything with this air of class but twisted up with a bit of new-age style. Her father could always impress. She was still foundering to find her feet in that world. “Miss Storm, thank you for taking me up on my offer for lunch, I hope you’re hungry I’ve had our meal flown in from LA, server and all.” Pete was wearing a pair of black dress pants tightened against her boyishly small hips with a white belt pulled to the last loop and a dress shirt tucked in that was your average white undershirt for professional dress. Well, she can find her way here, that's a plus, I was worried she wouldn't be able to navigate the inside of a shoe.

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Pete seemed to notice how Sylvia eyed the bottle and pulled it from the ice, “I, uh, apologize for the oddity of non-alcoholic bubbly but I don’t drink and that has nothing to do with the fact I legally can’t from my age,” A tense laugh followed as she opened the bottle. “I’d really like to avoid having to say, hello my name is Pete Stark and I’m an alcoholic, at any point in my life,” She still knew how to pour it the right way; tipping the glass an angle and the neck of the bottle inside to pour. “Hnn,” She raised one eyebrow as the girl talked about her father. Her words, more normal, made Pete feel detached from what most young people felt towards their parents. Her relationship with her father had always been… different. Even now, she felt as unable to say no or stand up to her father as she had at five years old, maybe even less capable. “I really only know your father through stories and most of those stories are coming from Mr. Richards and then through my father, so twice removed from the original source." Which in my family means, you cough, and in three days some magazine has your open mouth on the front cover with -- Stark dying of HIV... Pete thought. I really hate that rumor... She tried to focus. Dammit, focus, Stark... she sure has a pretty face-- ok, massive failure at focusing.

A waiter came in and set two warm plates down on the ones already at the table, it was a meal of fish and vegetables. This is the worst distraction ever, a plate of fish and... ah god how am I going to eat this? A long piece of salmon draped with a lemon sauce and a side of grilled vegetables and stuffed mushrooms. Pete eyed it as the waiter left, This looks scary, she thought, some part of being a child that had not yet left her trickling back into her mind. Food had never been easy to get along with. Pete disliked almost everything. “Gone are the good old days when I could just have a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter and be done with it, I use to cry when Papa would take me out to eat because we always had to eat sushi or something else in his never-ending attempts to break me of my picky eating,” She was rather thin and this, mixed with being short and of a petite body build, all rolled into Petre being a rather physically un-intimidating sight. “Oh well, it’s better then the time Papa had his birthday in Mexico and the hotel brought down this big green cake and I refused to eat it with him. I told him that cake is not met to be green, neither in frosting nor in filling. He got food poisoning and in true Stark fashion bought the hotel and redid the menu.” Petre tried to just... talk. It wasn't something she normally did, conversation was difficult when it wasn't down to business or with her father but she felt that Sylvia needed a human connection. And I'm the worst person for that, well, suck it up Stark, Pete tensed of olive colored jaw. The color of her skin was different from her fathers, a Mediterranean color she had inherited from her mother.

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Pete nodded once, she knew about Sylvia having her father’s powers. “Actually, I wasn’t allowed at most of my fathers parties… for a number of reasons. I had a very rigorous academic schedule and a lot of rules,” She picked up the fork with her cybernetic hand. Her entire right arm was that of a robots, though it wasn’t any bigger than her normal arm, just colored matte silver with gray instead of hidden beneath synthetic skin. “I don’t expect either of us to say the choices are families made were wrong, I believe in my father and everything he has done but I believe its time to move foreword. No matter what is right and what is wrong, we have to be better than the past to produce a positive future.” She smirked, a piece of fish at the end of her fork she seemed to be avoiding putting in her mouth. 1 ft2s-1=0.09290 m2s-1, Pete stuck the fish in her mouth. 1 centistokes (cSt)=10-6 m2s-1… this tastes horrible, filthy, her mind was always working, doing several things at once. Sometimes she felt guilty, as if she wasn’t really listening to people but she found she walked away remembering everything that had been said and feeling she had responded adequately to it. 0.1047 rad s-1 = 1 rpm, 2π*radius… I should be able to turn this off, textbooks… start repeating, cycling around… maybe I’m taxing myself with Cold Fusion Power? No. I’m not. I could do more. Focus. Pete made brief eye contact with Sylvia. “You would be a good person… to bring people together. People don’t like me. I’m aware of this. I need someone… someone that people like.” So simple. People, they are never simple. Slot A always fits slot B, equals C outcome, always dependable, always the same, people not this way… A doesn’t fit B, it doesn’t come out C… all messed up, unpredictable, frustrating. 6895 Nsm-2… I like that better, always equals the same, one Reyn. Easy. “I’m going to have to disappear for three weeks got… projects, important ones…” Pete started to trail, clearly thinking. “What happens if someone shoots you? Can you melt bullets before they reach your skin and the discharge from the bullets, can you sweep it away from your body with the flow of fire… you might need a protective suit but your head…” She stared at Sylvia’s head, thinking. Maybe not armor, perhaps a device that emulates sound and gases, deflecting… or changing flow, no… hnn…ratio of specific heats around her could be studied…

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Pete nodded, “Sorry if I seem to ask questions that don’t pertain to anything. I want to finance the new Avengers and I want,” F = ma = mv2/r. “the people that join to be as safe and well equipped as possible. If that means designing a helmet that even you can wear, then that’s what I’ll do.” The fact that a superhero, no matter how great, could be taken out by a singe sniper still haunted her. It had struck her as a child because it had stuck her father. It had been the first time Petre had seen her father stumble. “At the very least, the mansion is open to you.” 6.67*10-11Nm2kg-2 Crunch. “You can stay there. Your needs will be provided for and you can utilize the training areas below and, even without that, you can use it like a free hotel to do some intense New York sight seeing and go back to whatever,” P(P(z)) = P(z) = z . “you wanted to do with your,” chain rule. Observe. G(z)=P(P(z)). “life before the Avengers ever came up as an option,” She ignored her food, one elbow on the table and the fork moving up and down between her index and middle finger like an unbalanced see-saw. “I really didn’t want this to be about... the past, some family feud thing… it’s not that.” Rockets. Next year. Definitely. Cold Fusion… countdown, then three weeks lock down, then good to go, Pete licked her bottom lip, it felt course and dry. Everything will be alright.

Petre brought the fork down on the plate with a sharp clank and pulled off a piece of flaky white fish, the food was delicious but she couldn't get past her mental blocks over eating anything outside her comfort zone. "I uh... eat a lot of peanut butter protein bars..." She said, almost randomly, while looking down her plate. "I probably... am a bundle of vitamin deficiencies... I don't really like food, actually... I know that isn't normal. I mean, I don't know what I mean haha." She made an awkward sound, an attempt to laugh that didn't make it out right. The woman at the podium was evaporating the longer she sat here with Sylvia, back to the things that Reed and Susan had been saying for years. That Tony never let Petre play, that she had grown up spending too much time alone, that robots, artificial intelligences and the occasional scraps from short-lived girlfriends and an overworked Pepper Potts was not enough. Pete had spent so much time in her own worlds, driven by her own unfathomable intellect that real people had drifted away, to some island the child was not allowed to visit and when she did visit, she experienced this new world while hiding behind the legs of her father... and by then, she only believed what Tony thought of this world. Yet, whenever Reed talked about these things, he did it with a sober sadness and a brow furrowed, creasing his forehead.

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Petre was dressed androgynously, which could be very in style… if Pete weren’t doing it as part of her normal, constant, style. She was obviously emulating her father. It took her already small form and made it seem boxed under a suit that was too close to something pulled right off the shelf of the men’s section. Perhaps her father didn’t have the heart to tell her she dressed like she was going through a major gender identity crisis. “I can’t make this look any less stereotypical so…” radicand is zero. She pulled out a black leather wallet. “I’m just gonna do it,” (a-d)/2c, fixed point. And flipped it open. She started to pull out hundred dollar bills. “I’m taking this as a major compliment,” Pete gave a shaky grin, the corners of her mouth seemed unable to catch and hold it. “That you planned to be here and back home in one day and now you’re considering staying. That’s excellent, Miss Storm. An unexpected transformation,” transformations… ellipticelliptic Möbius transformation mappings. Shut up head. “Is… eight hundred enough? No," She frowned and pulled another three bills. “Here, this way you should be able to get a couple outfits at most stores.” She’s really pretty, I couldn’t let her go shopping at Wal-Mart, if her family got wind of that I’d be burned at the stake… my own father would light the pyre… Petre paused. The pile of hundreds sat on the table. “Oh… maybe a check would be better, uh… I only have plastic and cash. Papa usually handles checks if we need them, actually…” She fumbled with the wallet, it had an decent amount of credit cards within. You sound so juvenile, christ. “Too bad there really is never anything I want… do you want a lot of things? I mean, things you can buy, anyway.” She pushed the cash towards Sylvia. "Please, take it. I'll burn it if you don't." Pete made brief eye contact.