The last customer left the office wearing the sort of satisfied smile people usually reserved for adultery, tax fraud, or finding out their neighbour was dying first.
Lucius watched the door close behind him, then rose from his chair and nodded towards Tony.
"Come on."
Tony stood as well and glanced at the desk, the receipt ledger, and the locked drawer where cash had been disappearing into as if by magic.
"You know," he said as he followed him out, "I find it deeply unfair that your syrups sell at these prices. And I'll buy that drawer at any price you want."
Lucius looked at him.
"They are potions, Stark, and the drawer is not for sale because I like you."
Tony waved one hand.
"Sure. Magic juice, fruit science, bottled miracles, whatever label lets you sleep at night. My point stands. You are making insulting amounts of money, and I want that drawer."
Lucius smiled. "If you insist, twenty-five million for the drawer and blueprints of your energy source.
As they crossed the lobby towards the lifts, he dialled Mercer and waited with Tony beside him.
Mercer answered on the second ring.
"Mr Noctis."
"Daniel, I need you for another collection."
Tony's brows went up slightly at that. Lucius ignored him and kept speaking.
"Yes, as soon as possible. Same place, bring your counting toys and the serious faces." He listened a moment, then nodded once. "Good day."
He ended the call and slipped the phone away.
Tony stepped into the lift with him.
"I'm almost afraid to ask why you don't keep your money in banks."
"I don't trust the system."
"That much, huh?"
Lucius gave him a faint grin as the lift began to rise. They reached his suite and walked through the quiet corridor to the Royal Suite. Sebastien let them in and disappeared again with the efficiency of a man who had learned not to ask why Tony Stark was still in a potion merchant's day like an expensive bad habit.
Tony headed straight for the bar the moment they entered. He poured himself a drink, then looked around. "You know, I'm used to rich men telling me they're doing well. I'm not used to them proving it with herbal supplements and cash flow."
Lucius left him to the drink and walked to the bedroom first.
He closed the door behind him and swept the suite again before he did anything else. It had become a necessary habit. He trusted hotel walls the way he trusted SHIELD apologies. The scan came back clean. No microphones or cameras. No clever little gifts hiding in lamps, vents, or sockets.
Then he got to work.
He had already built one working pair for himself. The next step was obvious.
He replicated the Ray Ban Aviator frame in his hands, kept the design identical enough not to offend his own taste, and adjusted the internal system so it would function for anyone rather than only for him. After that, he shaped new constructs for the scouts. Bees first, a couple dozen this time, each one small enough to pass unnoticed. Then the birds. A mixed set, all smaller than a crow, light enough to look natural above streets and ledges without drawing more attention than city filth already did.
By the time he returned to the sitting room, Tony had moved from the bar to the centre table with the drink in hand and the bored patience of a man.
The bees and birds followed Lucius out of the bedroom in a loose mechanical drift.
Tony looked up and straightened abruptly. For a second, he simply watched them.
They moved with clean, deliberate control, not fluttering at random and certainly not like anything alive.
"You know," Tony said, lowering the glass, "I think I'm already over the age where I needed the explanation about birds and bees, and so are you."
Lucius set the new aviators down on the table.
"Who knows?" Lucius quipped back.
Tony stepped closer to the nearest bird. It perched on the arm of a chair with the balance of something pretending well. The body looked natural enough at a glance, but when he leaned in, he caught the seams and the small precision in the head movement.
"They're robots."
Lucius looked offended.
"They are elegant constructs."
"They are robot birds and robot bees. Damn, that's a new fetish." Tony pointed at one of the bees as it hovered near the lamp. "And that one looks like it's judging me."
"It probably is."
Lucius took the aviators, handed one pair to Tony, then moved to the balcony and opened the doors.
The afternoon air rolled in at once with city heat, and the layered noise of Manhattan living several storeys below its own price range.
Lucius put his own pair on. Tony followed a second later.
Then Lucius released the constructs.
The birds shot out first, cutting across the open air and splitting into directions that only looked random if one was stupid. The bees followed in a lower cluster, then broke wider and smaller, slipping between ledges, signs, balconies, and the endless little blind corners cities created for people who thought walls counted as privacy.
The screens inside the aviators came alive.
Tony leaned back against the balcony rail and watched Midtown Manhattan unfold in layered feeds, with rooftops, side streets, delivery entrances, pedestrians, cars, reflection paths, heat traces, and movement priorities all being mapped at once before the system reduced the noise into something a human could actually use.
A pedestrian on the pavement below flashed briefly with a marker for a concealed handgun. Another tag appeared two blocks over for a knife, and a third flagged a security sidearm. The screen sorted threat levels into different colours.
"This is good."
Lucius said nothing.
Tony kept watching the feeds.
"Actually, no. This is more than good. This is annoying."
"Because?"
"Because I hate it when somebody else has the interesting toy first."
Lucius smiled and let the scouts move wider.
One of the birds skimmed across a neighbouring rooftop and sent back a clean angle on three men smoking where they thought nobody cared. A bee slipped past a restaurant awning and fed in a close street corner map that would have taken ordinary surveillance teams five men and a van to build badly.
After another minute, Tony took the aviators off and turned back into the room.
"Can they listen and record?"
"Of course they can." Lucius removed his own pair and set them on the table. "The aviators just do not include earpieces yet."
Tony's head tilted slightly. The idea was already moving in his head.
"You don't need earpieces." He tapped one temple tip with a finger. "Transmit through the frame. Tiny vibration drivers. Bone conduction or close contact resonance from the tips. Cleaner, harder to spot, and you don't have to shove anything extra in the ear."
Lucius considered it.
"That's better."
Tony looked pleased with himself.
Lucius folded his arms.
"If I were to become a design engineer in a company that officially stopped designing weapons, I assume I would be expected to think of things like that."
Tony looked at him for a second, then pointed lightly with the glass.
"Call me Tony. You're smart enough to have the privilege."
"Likewise."
The handshake followed naturally.
Tony's grip was easy, confident, and just serious enough to mean the moment counted.
"So," he said, releasing it, "I just noticed Stark Industries appears to need an engineer. Are you interested?"
Lucius thought about it for several seconds.
"I want an absurdly high salary. I will work one hour a day. And other than you, nobody in the company calls me unless the building is on fire or- scratch that, even when it's on fire."
Tony nodded as if that were not even close to the strangest demand he had heard in a business discussion.
"Reasonable."
Lucius narrowed his eyes.
"That answer worries me."
"It should. I'm in a good mood." Tony set the drink down. "Did you patent the designs?"
"Not yet."
Tony's face changed just enough to show he was already halfway through a list of legal disasters.
"Would you consider selling them to me?"
Lucius shook his head.
"I will not sell them. You can use them indefinitely, and only you, not anyone else. Not some grinning military parasite who hears the words tactical application and starts salivating."
Tony held his gaze, then nodded once.
"Fair."
Lucius picked the aviators back up and dissolved the constructs outside one by one. The feeds vanished from the lenses as the birds and bees broke down into nothing over the city.
There was a knock at the suite door. Sebastien entered just far enough to preserve form.
"Mr Mercer has arrived, sir."
Lucius glanced at Tony.
"That will be the serious faces."
Tony looked at the door and then back at the table.
"I should probably leave before your banker has to explain this friendship to compliance."
"Yes. That would be cruel."
Tony started for the door, then paused beside it.
"One more thing."
Lucius looked up.
"If you're really going to keep buying my company, try not to look too eager when you do it."
Lucius smiled faintly.
"I'll do my best to look bored while acquiring more of your life."
"That's the spirit."
Tony left, still wearing the pleased look of a man who had come to ask a question and accidentally found a kindred spirit.
--
In a secured workshop elsewhere, Obadiah Stane stood on the metal platform and looked up at the armour taking shape before him.
The Iron Monger frame towered over the work floor, ugly in the way only serious war machines ever were. It had none of the cleaner lines Tony instinctively chased, no elegance, no attempt at sleekness. It was broad-shouldered, thick-plated, overbuilt, and brutally honest about what it wanted to do once powered. Hydraulic assemblies sat exposed in places where Tony would have hidden them. The arms looked capable of tearing engine blocks apart. The chest cavity was still open because the real problem remained exactly where it had always been: energy.
Stane stepped closer and looked at the housing meant to hold the core.
Riva had managed the frame. He had managed portions of the control systems; the imitation was good enough.
He had not managed the damn power source.
That left only one option.
Stane turned away from the platform and headed for his office.
If he could not replicate the heart of the thing in time, then he would visit Tony and see what could be taken, steered, or pried loose.
-
Back in Malibu, JARVIS finished the final pass on the numbers pulled from the satellite phone.
The list assembled cleanly on Tony's screen, showing dates, times, cross references, routing paths, and linked contacts where the analysis had enough confidence to stop calling them guesses.
Tony read through it once, then sent the file on.
Pepper answered within minutes.
This better be worth the level of secrecy attached.
Tony typed back immediately.
It is. Keep the investigation quiet, use no assistants, tell no board members, and handle it yourself.
After another pause, Pepper sent back: That's never reassuring.
Tony sent the list anyway.
-
At the St. Regis, Lucius did not wait for anyone to remind him about patents.
By the time the evening settled properly, the filings were already in motion through the channels that mattered.
There was not much else to do except wait.
Stane's betrayal was close now. And when it did, another ten per cent would become an easy harvest. He doubted Stane would be a cheapskate when his life was on the line.
Lucius found that thought calming.
He looked out over the city from the suite and smiled to himself.
Let the old vulture make his move.