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Penthouse, Stark Tower, 200 Park Avenue and 45th Street, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, August 23, 2010

Anthony Edward 'Tony' Stark landed upon the recently constructed landing pad he had made for him to access his penthouse suite (and also outside) with the gentlest landing he could considering what he carried in his arms, the figure of a tweenage woman clutching at him hard. The one-minute flight had taken longer than usual because Tony had kept it slow for the girl dressed in a medical smock, wind chill being an issue for her. And as soon as he launched himself off of Forty-Fifth Street, JARVIS and his own Heads-Up Display told him that the girl had panicked hard when they took flight. She had clutched onto him as hard as she could, practically in a fetal position as he carried her in his arms to the eighty-eighth floor of Stark Tower, landing softly as his audio receptors picked upon the girls' whimpering sobs, whatever ordeal she had suffered obviously exasperated by her short flight that was nearing a thousand feet in the air. She might be afraid of heights, Tony thought to himself as he walked from the landing pad to his suite, where the top ten floors were his and his alone. Large glass panes slid open as Tony walked with his burden, the girl never letting go as his armored feet hit marble flooring.

In the open-air living room stood Virginia 'Pepper' Potts, watching the local news channel that showed what he had done in the past five minutes as the Chief Executive Officer of Stark Industries turned to look at him with the most befuddled face he had ever seen on her. And that was saying something. Tony was more than a bit eccentric, being the genius that he was. He was also reckless and a thrill-seeker, not to mention a recovering playboy. Pepper had weathered those things for years. Becoming Iron Man had entered a whole new slue of rather interesting scenarios that his once-upon-a-time personal assistant had to deal with, ranging from disastrous to catastrophe.

Bringing in a stray? That was a first.

Tony first took a knee to set the child down, easing her feet to the ground as her initiated the protocol to demask, the faceplate lifting upward to reveal his face as the clamshell helmet retracted to where he could remove it, the girl's arms still around his neck, though nowhere near as tight as before. Her head pulled away a little to look at him, red-rimmed green eyes studying him as he knelt in front of her. Her arms slowly slid away from him as she stood in front of him, obviously nervous as Pepper took a few tentative steps forward, getting into the girl's line-of-sight so as not to surprise her unexpectedly. Her green eyes shifted over to Pepper for a moment, and then to him.

"Hey, you're safe now." Tony told the child, doing his best to reassure her. He could see that her panic was subsiding, that she didn't look nearly so afraid as before on the street. Her fear was still high, but it had subsided somewhat. "This is my home, and believe me, it's very well protected. That means you are very well protected. Understand?"

"Y-yes." The girl nodded slightly but quickly, her eyes dropping to the floor, a little nervous. Her eyes then went from the floor to where the great wall of paned glass separated the room from the outside, showing a wall-to-wall vista of New York City. Her eyes were locked in on that, Stark noted. "W-where am I?"

"Stark Tower." Tony replied, the question a little understandable. The girl had been in a full panic on the street, and had been near hysterical while in flight. She had probably shut her eyes close and hadn't seen the sign on the tower.

"I mean… where are we?" The girl pointed to the skyline presented before them, her finger indicating the city beyond the glass wall. Pepper and Tony looked at each other for a moment, the both of them sharing the same exact thought.

Who didn't recognize the New York skyline? The most photographed and filed skyline in the world?

"You can see Rockefeller Center right there." Pepper knelt by the girl, gently taking her hand and pointing out the skyscraper in question. "And there you can see Times Square."

The girl just looked at them. No recognition. None whatsoever.

"We're in New York City." Tony added, looking at the redheaded child, who didn't react to the name at all. "Do you know what country we're in?" It seemed such a silly question to ask, but he had a nagging suspicion.

"I… don't."

"Honey, we're in the United States of America." Pepper told her softly, her face saying it all. How the hell did someone not know what country they were in? Even just by the language, the lettering, and the accents? But that wasn't what shocked him the most.

"Is that… good?"

She had no idea what America was.

Pepper looked to Tony, her face shocked. The girl literally had no clue as to where she was, or even what where meant! It literally had to be a statistical impossibility for someone not to have heard of America, with its plethora of movies, music, radio, television shows, products, innovations, and the fact that it was a global superpower. Oh, perhaps some Chinese farmed way out east in the middle of nowhere that hadn't gotten a visitor in the past century or so, but Tony didn't really believe that was likely. But this girl was obviously Caucasian, and spoke with an American accent. She wasn't English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Australian, or from New Zealand; obvious English-speaking nations with noticeable accents. That would leave Canada, whom some had light accents and said a few words differently, but for all intents and purposes was very close to American English. But every Canadian knew of America, the nation just south of it.

This girl didn't recognize the name at all.

"Okay, so… introductions?" Tony decided to start simple with this unusual situation. "Obviously, I'm Tony." Perhaps it wasn't too obvious for her. "Have you heard of me? Tony Stark? The Iron Man?" The girl just slowly shook her head. It had been nearly a year since he outed himself to the press (and the world) as the world's first modern-day superhero. And this girl hadn't heard of him. "This here is Pepper Potts. She's my boss."

"It's good to meet you." The older woman replied to the younger one with a smile. "What's your name, honey?"

"T-Thirteen."

Tony felt his heart shrivel at that answer as he turned his head to Pepper, seeing her face go pale as her horrified eyes sought his. They were both thinking the same thing. Of a nightmare only spoken of in movies and books, some mad scientist cackling as he waxed poetic his evil schemes to the hero with a bad soliloquy. There had been rumors that the Soviets had done such things in the past, but there had never been any real evidence. Yet the answer the girl had given them? That wasn't the name for a twelve or thirteen year old woman.

That was a name for a test subject.

"She's asleep. Poor thing."

Pepper Potts comment barely caught Tony Starks' attention as he reviewed several holographic images of the event that had happened an hour prior, to include what his suit recorded, traffic cams, CCTV's, cell phone postings on Twitter and Instagram, and even a few dashboard cams courtesy of the New York Police Department. He was finally out of his suit, having scared up a meal for the young woman he had plucked out of the middle of Forty-Fifth Street to watch her dig into her food like a starved inmate, practically passing out at the kitchen counter after almost licking her plate clean of its fare of Teriyaki chicken and chow mien. The billionaire had collected the girl and carried her to Peppers' 'guest' bed, laying her down and covering her up before going into what he called his 'investigative' mode. Pepper had watched the young woman doze off for a few minutes, likely to give her a sense of security before returning to the living room where Tony stood, pulling up megaBytes of data to find the answer that burned in his mind.

Who the fuck was doing this to a child?

"I'm sorry to lay this on you spontaneously…" Tony began, but Pepper cut him off quickly.

"Tony, some enterprising teenaged girl in a nearby vehicle with her cell phone practically recorded the whole thing where you landed and that girl described how someone was after her, how she had been running for who knows how long dressed in a cheap medical gown." The CEO of Stark Industries explained. "First, you looked incredible on the news, sweeping some child who was practically hugging your leg off when a band of assholes thought they could intimidate you into handing her over. The news was practically singing your praises, and I don't doubt that the reaction is going to be very positive. But more importantly?"

Pepper pulled him into a tight hug and kissed him before backing away enough that he could see her.

"I don't know what's going on, but you did the right thing. And I fully support it."

"You… you should have seen her face, Pepper." Tony explained, shaking his head softly. "Her face, her eyes… she was in mortal terror. I don't think I've ever actually seen that look on a man's face when I've come for them. Not even in that cave do I think I felt that much fear in my life or for my life." Tony could actually remember when… "When Obie ripped the Arc Reactor out of my chest, as I laid there helpless on the couch? I knew I was going to die, but that didn't do it.

"It was when he told me that he wished I hadn't gotten you involved that I felt that level of fear." Tony described, never having told her that. He had pushed himself harder than he ever had, crawling down the stairs and over broken glass to take the Arc Reactor Mk. I that Pepper had jokingly given him as a gift. He had flown right towards Stark Industries' headquarters with a too-small reactor quickly losing charge to fight his backstabbing partner and his dad's best friend, a man that Tony had seen as an Uncle, because of that fear. He had risked his life not for himself, not to beat Obadiah Stane.

He had done it out of fear for Pepper. The thought of her dying had absolutely terrified him.

"I… here." Tony pulled up one of the holographic images, the one recorded from the suit, using his hand to suggest it being front-and-center. He then rotated his hand to the right to 'fast-forward' it until he paused it at the moment when he had looked down at the girl after Lead Gorilla told him that he would regret his involvement. The image had the girl's face, her eyes wide with fear, pleading, her limp out a little enough to indicate that it was trembling. Pepper looked at the image in horror, clasping her hand to her mouth to cover a small sob, seeing the same thing he had. There was no denying what that girl's face had held.

Unequivocal fear.

"That poor girl…" The woman said softly, shaking her head sadly. "Tony, I don't think she's… she's ever been outside."

"She's pale, doesn't recognize New York City, medical gown but no medial bracelet." Tony noted all that. "A long-term patient, such as a coma patient, might fit that description. But she indicated that she had been running for some time. I'm having JARVIS use traffic cameras to reverse-plot her path to see where she came from, to see if we can get an idea where she might have come from, or at least narrow it down."

"And the assholes?" Pepper asked, a cutting tone to her voice. She was a business woman in charge of one of the richest, most public companies in the world, and understood that some actions demanded response. And she very much knew what Tony like to do for kicks upon people who thought terror was a weapon.

"They left post haste when I did." Tony replied, having already looked into it. "They drove for three minutes, parked their vehicles, and all twenty of them got out and went to the subway." The subway was a notorious way to duck surveillance thanks to its too-few cameras and too-high population of pedestrians and transients. "They probably got orders to board a train and get out at various locations, and then board another and leave at another station. JARVIS might get facial recognition hits and some leads on a few, but these guys weren't street thugs or some low-level enforcer. They've scatted to twenty winds and will meet up later, probably in another state. I'm already conducting facial recognition and background checks on their faces." Thankfully, the Department of Motor Vehicles sent the photographs taken for Driver's Licenses and sent them to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Archives. He was betting he would be pulling up Military Identification Cards as well. He had only gotten a preliminary hit on John Tanner, Lead Gorilla's facial recognition getting hit on the easiest access to government databases; the DMV. Other records would require a little more finesse, but considering that Pepper had practically told him his public intervention was being viewed quite popularly meant he could call in a few favors especially if it was for the sake and welfare of a child. "I have the SUV's being watched, but I don't doubt that sometime this evening or tonight, either a legit tow truck will pull them away and they'll be cubes by tomorrow morning before anyone bothers to fingerprint them or sweep for evidence, or they'll be taken to chop shops or jacked right on the street by local hires. I already ran the plates; they're fake plates with current tabs."

"Professionals." Pepper got the point Tony was making. "They didn't seem to balk when they walked towards you, not from what I saw. You said something that made them rethink their position. Not the suit; perhaps the comment on publicity?"

"A point, and I'll look into that." Pepper brought something up; someone was paying the gorillas to recapture the girl, that was obvious. In fact, they had likely already been on the payroll. Twenty men of professional quality, likely law enforcement or military-oriented training and probably a decade of experience? That meant pocket, likely deep pockets. But that also meant that it was public company of some sort paying the bills, not some Mob family or gang. Someone who didn't want their name dragged through the mud. That meant employment records pointed to a company… but chances were those were already scrubbed. Well, cops caught white-collar criminals who were good at falsifying evidence and records based on circumstantial and circulatory evidence. And public records and identities were near impossible to erase because there were so many files and pieces collaborating towards those identities. "My first guess is the first play for her won't be an armed response; this is public news. I'm thinking a legal response, probably in the form of the police escorting Child Protective Services to take her off my hands and escort her to the dumbest location possible for an easy snatch-and-grab."

No surprise, there was no record of file on the girl. Facial recognition ad gotten nothing. Fingerprints scanned from her utensil from when she ate courtesy of his equipment and JARVIS had likewise gotten nothing. Again, that wasn't a real surprise since the girl was young minor with no physical form of identification. Most public schools nowadays had identification cards with pictures on them, but the worry of someone hacking a system and looking into records meant most schools didn't put any information on digits. Annoying, but smart. Birth records and Social Security would be useless without a name (and she had to have a name), so Tony had another scan running; missing children. That database was sadly clogged with potentials, but likely there was a boon with the girl being a 'true' redhead, her hair somewhere between the color of copper and bronze. That was a rare thing, and quite noticeable. The first criteria on the search was based on hair color considering redheads numbered less than a percent of the Caucasian population alone, more important than age. Due to her lack of any knowledge of the outside world, Tony had opened up the search field for the past decade, going all the way back to the start of the Twenty-First Century, when the girl would be either a baby or a toddler.

Twenty minutes into that search had yielded dozens of cases that he would have to look into with the knowledge that someone had taken kids for whatever reason.

"I'll have our lawyers set something up that give us, and specifically you, some blockage for just that very thing." Pepper, bless her heart, was a very smart woman who had a very interesting resume that included Tony Stark's Personal Assistant. She could almost out-predict him and his eccentricities. "It might take the first judge willing to sign a warrant for a legally-endorsed-and-forced handover with the promise of a bribe or a campaign contribution, but we can do the same thing." Bless her heart, Pepper got things done. If it needed to be done off the straight and narrow? She did it anyhow. "I'm thinking that push will be led by a lawyer who won't name a client, or it will be anonymous. It might be a press push, trying to get steam via the public to force you to hand the child over. Or someone claiming to be a parent. We're going to need a DNA sample and the best evidence you can recover legally to provide alibis against such things.

"Tony, Iron Man might need to sit this one out."

"I know." Tony had considered that possibility. If what he feared was true, if some business, company, or corporation had a child as a test subject? Iron Man flying to said location and thrashing the shit out of them like the Hand of God would look like a corporate strike. Him taking his suit and blasting terrorists, insurgents, and militants harming refugees got him good press and applause from many sectors around the world. Him dropping onto a company-owned installation would look like Stark Industries was making a play. As much as he wanted to, Stark couldn't just suit up and start leveling places like a Biblical Plague. "We have other means if we get a bead. Economics, finances, electronic, legal, undermining their corporate holdings while financing their enemies. But I have a feeling that we might see a name we might know well. Probably someone we've met at charity drives or events a time or two."

"We'll need to make sure who's in charge first. If it's a business in question, we need to know without a doubt who knew what." The woman next to him said as she looked at the screens he had up. "We have our holding companies and off-the-books sites just as much as any other multi-billion dollar industry. This could be another Stane in which a Board of Directors could be clueless as to what is going on. We need to know who's leading the project and who's signing off on the bills."

"Oh, I'm all on that." It was good that Pepper saw this in the same light he did; something was very morally wrong about this. Yeah, Tony admitted to himself that he was a bit of a shithead, the very picture of an arrogant rich bastard who flouted his wealth and public image for selfish reasons. He had learned some very painful lessons, and he was taking more accountability and responsibility for his actions. It was still a work in progress, but it was a work in progress. Stark Industries had been the world's leading weapon manufacturer not just because of his inventions, but because of his high-safety standards; every bomb, rocket, missile, or weapon system his company had made had been rigorously tested for compliance and functionality. Tony had never sold under the table, and certainly never sold faulty equipment. Obadiah Stane had been able to sell weapons to unapproved forces under Tony's nose by selling defective equipment that wasn't on the books, weapons that would work but didn't pass his high standards. That had been a blindside, Stark having left the 'unapproved' stock for later demolition in the hands of others without taking accountability. Pepper did have a point; a corporation wasn't always led by the man (or woman) at the top.

[Sir,] JARVIS spoke up as a PiP popped up in the holographic field where a dozen searches were going on, being done both by the Artificial Intelligence Program and Tony's own two eyes, [I have collated the identities of the men in the vehicles, as well as the drivers who didn't get out initially. While none of them have criminal records, all of them have military records.]

"About what I figured." Tony mused to himself, flicking a wrist to bring the information us of the twenty individuals. All men (not surprising), all Americans (again, not much of surprise), and records that seemingly went for at least half-a-decade to more, but the more resent information was sparse compared to later information when the men had enlisted with the…

…huh, United States Marine Corps.

"Not much information in the later years. Just posts and an… ETS?" Pepper was looking at the sole college-bound individual, John Michael Tanner, who had attended the Naval Academy in Annapolis. That meant he was a Commissioned Officer.

"That means they're Marine Corps Force Recon. Special Forces." Tony explained, knowing a great deal about the American Military. Special Forces didn't put down in writing individuals who passed through the qualification courses and entered into the elite professional units that made up the United States Militaries' elite units. It was to prevent foreign forces and clandestine services from targeting them or their family specifically with either martial strikes or coercion. Getting access to their military records would mean hacking into the Pentagon's mainframe… which was a joke and seemingly happened about every other month or so. But the military did take the files and records of their Special Forces a little more seriously, and those were generally kept in servers that were a good deal more protected.

Or I could have Rhodey look into it, Stark thought for a moment, knowing that his friend would likely see the same thing that he and Pepper did.

But whoever had a young girl confined had twenty former members of the Marine Corps, possible Special Forces members, on hand.

That didn't exactly bode well considering what their profession claimed they were to do.

Author's Note: Still in the middle of set-up of situation and plot, but it's getting intense. Boy can I weave or what?

So just who is this girl and where did she come from? Stay tuned, true believers! But like the Man in Black said in Stephen King's The Gunslinger, as long as Roland traveled with the boy Jake, the boy would have the gunslingers' soul in his pocket.

And as for the person responsible? It isn't your usual suspects. I dug deep into MCU canon.

I mention that the weapons being sold under the table by Stane were 'factory rejects' that didn't pass Tony's high standards. EVERY weapon manufacturing company keeps a very close eye on its stock and storage, and missing weapons would be a huge row (and as a case in point, millions of weapons went 'missing' when the Soviet Union fell and military commanders were selling gear just to earn a paycheck [or colluding with the Russian Mob]).

I mention the Marine Corps Force Recon, the USMC's Special Forces Branch.