A Wednesday in April 3:32 pm

Note to self, start planning Ironheart 2.0 tonight, Riri thought. Her head was already swimming with possibilities based on what Michael Burgos had just SITTING ON SHELVES waiting for her to show up.

Just as she got her best ideas looking at armor from Stark, vehicles from Reed Richards, and figuring out how SHE could make something similar, Michael had done the same for biological sciences and exotic materials that super science legends like Phineas Horton and Hank Pym had developed.

Emily definitely had a good head for patent law and business, and she shrieked excitedly when she saw just how his machine shops really made all the products they produced. As they talked, Emily was already writing up business plans, investment strategies and marketing ideas on her SI-tablet. Riri was too distracted mentally listing items she wanted to have made for herself, and spotting design flaws she could fix in no time.

Michael looked embarrassed as if he was telling about the time he had gotten lost as a child. "Well when I was seven I was trying to make a disintegration ray. I figured that being able to reduce things to powder by zapping it would be great for things like garbage disposal, or mining or excavation. But instead of dust, everything turned to a liquid, melting at room temperature then solid as soon as the beam switched off. Metal, rocks, wood, you name it, the ultimate recycler of anything laying around. So I thought what if a three dimensional printer could print using ANYTHING you wanted to put in it? Within a few months I had it so I could make anything FROM anything. So my family got into the business of cranking out everything you can imagine, and keeping how a family secret. But I want to spread out with it beyond just hiring family to keep it a trade secret. It will replace every recycling plant and factory on the planet lowering costs to practically nothing. Any ideas?"

That kept the three of them talking for ten minutes. Riri was also thinking of all the new armor she could make with a universal 3-D printer. If only she could afford enough adamantium she would be totally invulnerable! Or the slightly cheaper carbonadium would make her ALMOST invulnerable…

Now when they got to the bubbling tanks containing hearts, kidneys, livers and one brain Riri almost panicked assuming it was mad science syndrome at work. The refrigerated bottles of red liquid labeled "ARTIFICIAL BLOOD : DO NOT EXPOSE TO DEAD BODIES!" did little to comfort her.

"I first thought of trying to use cloning when my abuela needed a kidney transplant, but I just couldn't get it to work. But ever hear how in 1939, Phineas Horton showed the so called "artificial man" at the 1939 World's Fair? Grew it out of plastic and carbon artificial cells. Damn thing would burst into flames when exposed to air though. But it was a true artificial human. Took time to find enough about how he did it to take a few tries. Then there was the whole "bursting into flame" problem to solve. Next it was a matter of just growing individual organs instead of a whole synthetic human. I'm still testing the synthetic blood, but it seems to really be going well. Oh, the brain? That's REALLY a long story for another day…"

The possible ways to go into business providing universally compatible organ transplants, the legal difficulty of getting it through FDA approval, how to mass produce them, that was a very exciting discussion and would keep the trio busy for months.

But the half dozen shelves of old books… THAT was interesting and deserved future study as it turned out.

"My cousins in New York run a few different contractor businesses. Well, yeah, I have a big family, every Boriken is related as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, whenever they came across books when cleaning out old buildings or doing demolition work, they'd hang onto them and let me know. The whole family out to fifth cousins four times removed knew I studied everything I could get my hands on. I have an amazing collection thanks to them. Notebooks from different researchers, textbooks in a dozen languages, ancient manuscripts…"

Emily was reading through one shelf as he explained, reading post-it notes on each spine describing the contents, opening a few as she went. "Is this entire bookshelf on the occult? These are very rare… Paracelsus… handwritten? His original notebook?! The Tome of Oshtur? De Vermiis Mysterious?! This looks like a first edition! The Olaus Wormius NECRONOMICON in Latin… Theodorus Philetas NECRONOMICON in Greek? This is impossible, the Abdul Alhazred AL AZIF has been lost for ages, no one has a copy anywhere. Where did they find these?"

Michael smiled with a bit of pride. "The occult and alchemy were a great find. That's just what I'm working through currently, I have more I haven't even sorted through in storage." He walked over to a rack of boxes and pulled out some CD cases and held them out. "Would you like to read any of those? I have them scanned on CD-ROM if you want copies to take home? Are you all right? You're breathing hard, I'll get you a chair. Is it asthma, do you carry an inhaler?"

After she recovered her composure, he continued. "Some of the old chemistry texts and formularies had some amazing ideas. I was very lucky there. Riri, ever study Philo Zoglowski? No? He was brilliant, trust me. Created one of the first robot soldiers in World War Two. "ELECTRO, THE WONDER OF THE AGE? It was a big deal in the 1940s. Anyways, from a clean up job in an old factory my uncles got almost two truck loads of notebooks, blue prints, and prototype models. I also have work from a few less famous people. There was a warehouse in New Jersey with a collection from unorthodox scientists, material from all over. I still haven't figured out WHO collected it all or why they abandoned it. Simon Goettler, pioneer in androids., Bruno Varoz, the brain surgeon. Many others. I've had my nephew in New York cataloging it in his spare time for two years."

"The alchemy books were a huge help. Their obsession with the "philosophers stone" wound up discovering a lot of artificial crystals and gemstones. Now Riri, you're a chemical engineer and a damn good one. No, don't be modest, I saw that article you published on metallurgical experiments in artificial zero gravity last year. That article led to some amazing discoveries for me, it was brilliant stuff. Some of these stones and crystals I've been making could lead to a whole revolution in electronics, bigger than what we've done with quartz and silicon so far. You both see why I need help?"

Emily set down the copy of THE TOME OF ZHERED-NA she had been paging through. "Getting ANY of this out to the world will be a challenge. Roxxon or Hammer Technologies would assassinate anyone to keep this stuff off the market to protect their own profits. Or steal all the tech for their own business. People like Von Doom or HYDRA would want it all as secret weapons. Heck, the United Nations would want it under wraps just because governments hate change that might make people's lives better. I really like the idea of making THAT many rich and powerful people angry. I'm in. Especially since I have a hunch you're just getting STARTED with things to upset all the right people."

He laughed, "You're both going to love this next part. Thanks to alchemy in DE VERMIIS MYSTERIOUS I've developed four different varieties of artificial vibranium. Yes, FOUR alloys with unique properties. And unlike the two synthetics out there already, mine isn't radioactive, it doesn't explode and I can make it practically as cheap as aluminum. Ok, I can see you're skeptical but I'll show you how I do it later. But I have a quarter ton of Wakandan vibranium on a pallet in my warehouse."

Michael suddenly looked concerned. "Riri…are you… why are you crying?"

"I'M JUST SO HAPPY!" Riri wailed, her design for Ironheart 2.0 clear in her mind.

Michael shrugged and thought "Super geniuses. We don't even understand each other…"

Chapter 18

A Wednesday in April 4:52 PM

The trio decided to pick up their discussion of various ways they could collaborate the next day, as Riri had dinner plans. (Pizza with the Great Lakes Avengers in Milwaukee, she decided not to tell them. "Note to self, how did Tony keep a secret identity for so long? Find out details… ")

Riri had NO idea how to use the equipment and supplies at the Burgos Scrapyard without just coming out and saying "By the way, I'm Ironheart. No, IRONHEART… the superhero?" (Even in her daydreams she couldn't manage the "everyone loves me and knows who I am" thing.)

Emily volunteered to use her legal connections to find out whatever she could about their dead and missing "siblings" as they had been calling them for lack of a better word. She was inclined to claim to be working on a class action lawsuit against the hospital for "health problems caused to children born at that hospital in a certain time frame." In a way, it was true.

Michael took DNA swabs and planned to run them through the medical school gene sequencer that night, just in case there was anything to be found. He had access to an experimental Stark Industries MRI machine and would schedule brain scans for all three of them as soon as possible. "Maybe we will get lucky and we will find implanted microchips stamped PROPERTY OF FU MANCHU or something straightforward," he joked.

Riri tilted her head and thought. "Well, if we ARE someone's super science experiment it would be nice if it was someone with that much style. I'd be kinda disappointed if it turns out we all got radioactive baby formula or something lame. I've come up with some ideas for who to talk to about detecting if aliens, demons, angels or gods are involved. And I have a theory already."

That sent a jolt through her two new business partners.

"What?"

"Really?"

*Oh, you're gonna hate it. I mean REALLY GOING TO HATE IT. I mean I hate it and it's my theory." Riri stood up, stretched and then begin pacing. "Okay. So seven babies born in the same place at the same time all showed signs of superhuman intelligence. From what little I know of the other four already, they probably would have turned out pretty much exactly like us. But we were abandoned and ignored by whoever did this to us. Somebody had to be responsible, there is no way that sort of thing just happened. That's as unlikely as the empire State building suddenly turning into mint chocolate chip ice cream."

"Now if you are going to do something spectacular like that it should have a purpose. We should have been sent to a special school. We should have gotten special training. Our families should have gotten huge sums of money to make sure we were taken care of properly. Instead one of us who died young died of easily preventable health issues from the records I found before I reached out to you. Another of us who spoke six languages by the time she was three died because her family tried to do an exorcism because the stupid normies figured she was probably possessed by Satan. I recommend neither of you read much about what happened to her but it was horrific."

"So we were given absolutely amazing and incredible potential and then given no tools or resources to do anything with it. That definitely killed three of us. One of us ran away from home and hasn't been heard from since and hopefully he's still out there somewhere doing well but we all know that's probably not really likely. So why did whoever it is do it this way make us super geniuses and not give us anything to make the most of it?"

"Oh dammit!" Emily erupted into swearing in Spanish, Chinese, and two or three languages Riri didn't exactly recognize. "I'll kill the (unrecognizable epithets)!"

Michael looked confused, admitting "I'm not getting it…?"

Riri sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "In every experiment there's the group where you are testing for a change being made by something. And then there's a group you do nothing with, and see what happens to them, compared to the first group. You give 100 rats cancer, you give 50 of those rats a possible cure for cancer, and the rest are the control group left to die. Then you sit back and see what happens."

Michael's face went from confusion to realization then fury.

"Yep. You got it." Riri nodded. "Somewhere another group of super genius babies all got the experimental education and training and opportunity to see what they could achieve with brains better than Einstein or Reed Richards. And then there's us. The control group. Most of us dead. And us three lucky enough to not die, but we're all a bit…"

"Obsessed and weird," said Michael.

"Damaged and isolated," agreed Emily.

"And pretty angry about it," replied Riri. "So I suggest we break up the meeting for now, and think about things. And thank whoever helped us manage to get through this better than the other four."

"Other three," interjected Emily. "Callum Hendrix went missing when we were 14. I choose to believe he's out there doing awesome at something. Hopefully involving time travel."

"Or aliens. Maybe I have a cousin out saving the universe." Michael looked slightly jealous to Riri.