Welcome to Gaia! ::

Instead of Tony another figure came in, with a quick glance Vince might have thought it was a secretary but even his secretary wasn’t that petite. A young woman who looked in her teens or, at best, very early twenties stood in the doorway closing the door behind her with her foot. Petre Stark was known enough from being on TIME magazine and other media spotlights since a few days after she was born, the short haired girl had features of her father. Black hair, black eyebrows, blue eyes, and seemed to even have his stance and the same style of dressing. A very business oriented suit but the jacket was cut shorter and tighter in a more feminine fashion but, still, she came off as being very androgynous. Her small shape and small chest seemed to reinforce the image and the boyish haircut really made her look like she was gender-confused. Her olive colored skin had an exotic flare to it and seemed to fit her dark hair and eyes in the look of someone from a faraway land. She would have been very beautiful with another 15 pounds on her, breasts, longer hair, and an outfit fitting to her sex but as she was she came off as odd and lost between trying to be her father and not able to get there because she was a very small female.

Underweight and looking tired she glanced at her Rolex which sagged on her small wrist even at its tightest link, “I had to get up at six am to make this meeting, that’s why I have to be here because my father is still in bed, late night with a pair of Norwegian twins,” Petre smirked, seeing the man’s face trying to figure out what she was doing here and not Tony Stark. “However, you will find I am just as competent in the same fields as my father is and I am his partner, so I am able to discuss business.” She walked towards his desk and stuck out her hand. “Petre Stark.” Her eyes were cold, critical. Tony’s eyes. Tony’s stare coming through her and seizing him up and it was obvious everything said here would find its way back to the man through his loyal child. “What do you want?” She asked bluntly.

“Yes.” Petre was terribly immune to any of his good looks or flirtatious attitude, not only had she seen it all living with her father but she was so disinterested in romance and the opposite sex aside from one person that Vince might as well have been a dog wearing a suit for compatibility. N-fold integral, I need to fix that. She saw he was well dressed and appeared to be in a position of power through his style alone, despite that she knew who he was. “I don’t see any other reason for you to request a meeting with my father besides business because that’s all we are willing to have in common, if even that,” Hyperbolic arcs could work... She eyed the cart critically but turned her gaze away from it without selecting anything. She did, however, sit down. Pete’s right hand was obviously cybernetic because it was a matte silver though most of it was covered by long sleeves. “I have a lot I’d rather be doing. I don’t even know what this is about usually things are not so informal between huge corporations.” ...analogously to the WKB splitting already used for the Airy function, her mind wandered, a splitting network of functions and calculations.

Petre sat down with the most unsettling smirk on her face, one that Tony sometimes got when he wasn’t taking someone seriously or was getting bitched at by a soon-to-be ex-lover. “We don’t joint, we buy. If you want to sell your company to us, there’s something to talk about but the return of investment in a co-operative system would serve no purpose when we’re already buying, selling, and producing the most cutting edge weapons independently.” Her speech was sharp, cold, absolutely without remorse for whatever he was dreaming. “I can’t believe you requested to meet with my father to propose such a stupid idea. My father and I change the world on our own, we don’t need your people to help us turn a profit or an idea.”

The tiny young woman stood up abruptly, already gunning to leave. It was said Tony Stark was a very hard man to do business with and he bought companies out, often, just to shut them down despite the people he put out of work. Business was cold. The Stark family, seemed colder still. She seemed to need to hear something else to get her to even stay five minutes and talk with him of details. Though she paused, “However, you’re welcome to arrange a display or presentation for Stark Expo.” And then began to walk out.

…function (z-1)/(z6-1), Petre stopped as he blocked her path, black eyebrows quirking up. “That isn’t to be announced until the eight, this month, at Stark Expo, if you’re interested just find a seat in the crowd, it’s a free show. I would arrive early, though, the seats fill up.” She said in shortly. She had little experience dealing with people alone, without her father standing there though she found Vince to be an unsettling person one that her father would say had two-faces. Not that she didn’t have many faces and her father the same but it was a whole different thing when you put similar people, with lots of money, and lots of buying power, in the same space. Though, in the end, Petre was just acting like her father’s retriever and had no real power to make any business deals with Vince, only talk, and relay anything she thought worthy back to her father. Hmm, w = z2, “Yes…” Pete said slowly. Her small expressions pursed lips in a mix of annoyance. “Mr. Strange did not strike me as the chatty type,” But clearly, someone is talking to this man about internal going-ons at the mansion. “I know I didn’t send you an invitation to my initial roll call.”

Petre snatched the letter from him, “You’re an absolute fool if you think you could breach any of my family’s systems. There’s a reason that Stark technology fuels the world.” She glanced at the letter. “It is obvious you have ties to the X-Men since you’re not Strange’s biological uncle and you also donate anonymously to the charity fund for the group, you see,” The Stark child narrowed her eyes. “It is very easy to track those little transfers when you’re on top, Mr. Shaw. I actually make it my business to dig so deep into other companies that I know the color of their s**t twenty years ago. Its also how I make sure nothing backward goes on throughout all of my family’s companies, big and small. It would be easy for our weapons to leak all over the world, something my father and I have taken great pains to assure does not happen as well as protecting our Iron Man technology. We play the same game. I don’t know why someone like you, who has risen up through even more ruthless business practices then my family has had to employ at unfortunate times but I’d be an a** to smile and trust you to even hold a cup of coffee for me while I tie my shoe,” Pete said as she turned the thick classy envelope over as if it had anthrax inside. “I also see you went through painful means to hide your birth certificate and other records, so you don’t want it to be easy for people to know where you came from, your parents… I’d venture to say you’re far from ordinary, Vince.” Petre was very smart, this had been brought to Vince’s attention several times. Her father was smart, too, but the public seemed to think the child was even smarter but the public also seemed to think Petre lacked a lot of her father’s social grace and ability to run a business. She had a hard time being smooth like Tony could be, able to convince someone to do what he wanted without them even realizing he was. She spent most of her time in labs working on projects, not in the public eye, and not coming to meetings like this. It was obvious her father either didn’t trust she could handle it or was trying to protect her. And there, just like that was that little hook that separated Tony from Pete, where he would have left she hesitated. Curious. But also drawn to making her new, and failing, Avenger’s team work. She saw a possible opportunity in Vince that had nothing to do with business deals. “Why do you donate money to the X-Men and not want anyone to know your linage?” The girl asked him, blue eyes finally looking at him instead of past him.

((pulling from your profile, hope its all fine, and she absolutely does not know that Vince is a mutant or who his parents are))

“You implicate yourself…” Pete raised her eyebrow at him. She let it go. “Don’t patronize me, Vince, I’m not just a-a little tin soldier you can wind up and send back to my father with your letters,” She said defensively. “And if your linage is of no importance it wouldn’t be a secret, it always surprises me how much the general population lacks even the most basic grasp of logic… if you want to hide in front of a white sheet don’t show up dressed in black,” She exhaled to the side and touched the end of the letter to her bottom lip before tucking it inside her black suit jacket. “You… didn’t want to do any business, did you? You just wanted an opportunity to hand off this letter.” Petre observed. No matter how curious she was she wouldn’t open it, she never opened her fathers mail. “If you’ll move aside I’ll be on my way, oh,” She frowned. “It’s a little early to be drinking, don’t you think? Those habits might leave people to wonder if you’re an alcoholic, Mr. Shaw.”

Petre had heard every alcoholic insult on the books, and even then some, and so it hardly surprised her that such a jab would be thrown out. Even though Papa has been sober for almost 13 years people will never let it go. I suppose I have to let the simple people have their petty insults, for some reason she felt like she wanted to engage Vince in some kind of argument but she already felt the conversation had gained her nothing and it was all a waste of time. Pete didn’t find anyone interesting unless they were MIT professors, and even that, had become dull in the past years. “And, if you want to do business with me, Mr. Shaw I would be doing you a favor. I’m too smart for you. So don’t try to be smart around me. Try to be something else.” That was her advice, as she was not so black and white as her father. She wanted to see the Avengers succeed and she wanted to improve the world. “I’d consider a humanitarian project.” Finally, she gave something Vince could work with.

She opened the heavy door with both hands.