Disclaimer - I don't own Marvel or any of its characters. The Mighty Mouse does and I hope it is not standing behind me with a shotgun cocked and ready to blow my brains out the second I have the audacity to press PUBLI——
DoorMan #114
Stark Residence, Malibu [May 2008]
–Tony Stark–
Stepping down to his lab, he smiled at the familiar sight of all the lights turning themselves on, as well as the little robots he built throughout his college life come back to life, twitching and assuming their default positions.
He tapped DUM-E on its dummy head, heh, as the rest of the lab came alive. "Jarvis, get the data from the sensor suite S-123, and overlap with data gathered from our satellites. Hold off on hacking anything else for now. Let's hope that our data is sufficient for now."
"Affirmative," Jarvis' voice came from the ceiling as the holo projectors came to life, projecting multiple charts, graphs, as well as a video footage of this Mysterio doing the mind blowing stuff he did back in Galmira.
His healing was something else entirely, something that fascinated him to no end. He did not go back and take samples from those villagers, no they had suffered enough but he was certain that the Army was going to roll in soon enough with all the aid he had promised them, and if they did a routine medical checkup where they drew blood, well, then that was just routine and nothing out of the ordinary.
The rest of the stuff was equally impressive as well. He noted multiple energies coming off his mystery hero but two in particular interested him the most. They spiked during particular scenarios.
The one that Mysetio used to heal people, it was just garbage. His sensors could not make heads or tails of it, registering it as background radiation which was clearly not the case. Then, there was the energy that spiked particularly high when he used those yellow projections of his. Energy projections capable of so much and were strong enough to take a missile point-blank without cracking.
He was certain that the Generation One Arc Reactor he was building at Stark HQ would not be able to provide half the energy required to keep those projections active and sustained, especially at the levels of durability he had seen.
Then, there was the other energy, the one that spiked whenever he was flying. His flight was something else as well. Air propulsion, and not in the conventional way. He figured out the basics behind it a little later than he would have liked. Mysterio propelled himself by shooting air from various positions on his body, and at very high pressure as well, enough to propel him beyond the speed of sound with ease.
Not to mention his durability.
"Jarvis, note overall enhanced durability, especially for internal organs in the list of Mysterio's powers," He said out loud, his mind going back to the visual he saw of the man accelerating, decelerating and turning sharply, something that should not be possible unless they had either his inertial dampening tech, which was only possible because of the Arc Reactor, or they were enhanced throughout, allowing them to sustain whiplashes that would have killed normal people.
He was man enough to admit that even the pride of his suit, the inertial dampers would not have been able to move as evasively as Mysterio did. Either that thin onesie was a lot more advanced than he gave it credit for, or Mysterio was just built different.
All the varying powers made it kind of difficult to categorise his powers. He could not know if all the powers were enhanced, something that came to him naturally or were given to him in a bottle, or worse, were merely a byproduct of technology.
Technology so far beyond humans that it was indistinguishable from magic.
He shook his head and focused on the graphs. No use thinking about something that would just give him a minor existential crisis. Better to put his big boy pants on and work on stuff that he could get a meaningful return on.
Energy came off of that Mysterio for practically the entire time he was there, right up until he disappeared into the clouds. Another trick he could not make heads or tails of. He only had a vague stealth tech written in his mind explaining that but even that was far fetched because there had to be something there. It was as if he disappeared completely.
The energies coming from the masked man were varied in strength, frequency, and intensity, fulfilling different purposes, and the way stealth tech worked, cramping something capable of masking all that energy as well as sound, should not be so small as to get fit inside a single outfit.
He shook his head. There were too many unknowns in regard to that man. He didn't even know if there was actually a man underneath there or was it just a suit being operated from afar, something that he theorized he would be able to do soon enough, handing total control to Jarvis to create a legion of Iron Men, if need be.
Though he wagered that would not make the politicians feel any better.
"Alright, Jarvis, you get cracking on dismantling that energy mess and I will–" his words were interrupted as an alarm began blaring in the lab, something of a recent addition after that fateful day where he almost splattered on the pavement because of his stupidity and arrogance, so, just another Tuesday for him.
"Intruder Det–It's Mysterio, sir. He is floating on the roof, seemingly waiting. A feed opened up in front of him, showing Mysterio in his orange onesie floating mid air, cross armed.
He waved his hand as the microphone was activated, "I'm sorry, the Iron Man store is closed for the day. Please come back tomorrow. We would love to have your patronage."
The mics on the roof were not sensitive enough to capture the sound of Mysterio if he did not speak out loud, but thankfully, Jarvis worked seamlessly in enhancing the audio.
"Very funny, Stark. We need to talk,"
He grinned, eager to poke fun at that, "Uh-oh, are you breaking up with me? And only yesterday I thought we were destroying terrorist hideouts for fun!"
After a minute of silence, he snorted and shut down the mic. "Open the doors, Jarvis."
After his command, a series of lights lit up, showing Mysterio the path to the garage, the barricaded doors opening up, revealing the path straight to his lab.
He walked forward, dispelling the holodisplays, arms crossed as he waited for the Orange Menace to arrive. He was sure that Jarvis was scanning everything that Mysterio did, including the very silent way he flew, as if he was gliding on air.
"Welcome, to my humble abode,"
This time, he was close enough to hear the man snort.
"I wanted to cash in that check you were going to give me," Mysterio got straight to the point. He raised his eyebrows at that. Why would he want something that could easily be tied to his original identity? Still, that was not his concern.
"Sure," He shrugged and turned around, heading towards the door where he kept his chequebook, "How much do you need?"
"Not money," He paused mid step, turning around, confused. "Okay, I'm confused. I don't think you understand how a cheque works."
"Servers. I need computers. Lots of them," A small piece of paper floated out of onesie's pocket and towards him.
"Um, I don't like to be handed things," He shrugged at the confused stare he could feel from behind the mask.
Jarvis, being the helpful assistant that he was, used a robot, unnamed so he did not care much about it, to snatch the note and hold it to his eyes. His eyes widened in surprise, eyebrows rising up as he realised what Mysterio needed.
"Holy shit, what are you doing? Mining all the Bitcoin?" Okay, that was an over exaggeration but it did not diminish the fact that Mysterio was asking for enough hardware to populate the entire compute vision here at Stark HQ, which was already the largest private server cluster on the planet.
He deadpanned at the man, "You do realise that it would be easier for me to just give you billions, right? These things don't grow on trees. We are already on backorders and I don't think the foundries can give you your orders this year or even the next. Last I heard, they were now taking orders for delivery in 2011."
"How much can you arrange?"
He stared at the man, confused. Did he not listen to anything Tony just said? These were cutting edge chips, with circuitry so small that the laws of physics changed when someone was working at that small of a level.
"I can maybe, get you 10% of what you are asking,"
"When?" The next question came instantly.
"BY the end of the year?"
"Fine."
"...."
There was a minute of silence in the air before he raised his hands up, giving up, "Okay, I give up. What is the deal with you? Where did you pop out from? People like you don't just come out of nowhere. There must be a story behind you,"
There was a sigh that came from Mysterio, "I am a human, if that's what you were wondering."
Okay, that was something but nothing substantial.
"Anything more?"
"No."
"Fine! Can you at least help me with–" He paused as a Ding-Dong sound came through the speakers.
Jarvis displayed the feed from the front door, showing Obi waiting for him. Huh, their relationship might have taken a bump when he realised that Obi was the one who wanted him ousted from the company but still, it was Obi. He could not just shoo him from the front door.
….
….
Actually, he could. He could and he had, but that was before he thought it was cool to be mean and rude.
He then flashed Mysterio an awkward smile, "Actually, I have company. So, can you just–" He made a shooing gesture, which caused the man to sigh and nod.
"Thank you," He waved goodbye at Mysterio as he casually floated backwards, before reorienting himself and shooting out of his driveway.
Not 10 seconds later, Jarvis popped up another display, showing sensor failure, "Trace failed."
"Eh," He shrugged, "That was expected."
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