The façade of humanity is designed for comfort, and with increased comfort comes increased malleability
True to his nature Tony was late for his meeting with Catalina; he strode in to her office about ten minutes late. When he walked in the door he spotted her looking out of the massive window behind her desk, he noticed a small tattoo on the side of her neck; poking out of the top of her shirt. She absentmindedly reached behind to scratch the back of her neck. He coughed to get her attention.
"You're late Mr Stark" she stated, clearly annoyed.
"Sorry lunch ran a bit long" he replied sheepishly.
"Tony, lunch only requires two functions. To eat and digest food, it should not take one hour and 45 minutes to perform this task" her face remained impassive.
He actually squirmed a little; this Catalina was different from the sexy woman he had met last night. This woman was all business; it was kind of a turn on, because of her heels she was actually taller than him now so he had to look up to her.
She motioned for him to take a seat opposite her across her desk; she sat down and crossed her legs.
"Ok so this is the planned layout for the research centre, I wanted to get your final opinion on the……"
The meeting continued quite uneventfully, they discussed the new project and made some final improvements. Tony kept trying to put in some flirtatious remarks and get her to smile, but he didn't have any luck. She kept a straight poker face during the entire meeting.
As she was putting away a couple of files and he was going to leave the hologram appeared, nearly scaring he shit out of him.
"Catalina, the modifications to project Halo have been completed and are ready for testing, Reed Richards called again asking for your opinion on his new satellite tracking system and Charles Xavier called to congratulate you on your new research facility"
Catalina looked up and smiled at the hologram.
"Thankyou Sylia, I'll test out Halo this afternoon, tell Reed I'll meet him next Tuesday at 4:00pm and give Charles my love and send him the specs for the black bird upgrades"
The hologram nodded and made a metallic beeping noise. Then looked over at the dumbstruck Tony and coughed subtly. Catalina looked back up and snapped to attention.
"Oh yeah, Tony this is Sylia my assistant, Sylia this is Tony Stark"
Tony regained his composure.
"Hi"
Sylia smirked at the stunned industrialist.
"A pleasure, so you must be the man with the Iron Ass"
Tony's eyes nearly popped out of his head.
"Scuse me?"
Sylia looked innocent.
"Your Iron Man suit, It is a very impressive piece of technology"
Catalina suppressed a laugh; Tony looked so embarrassed that his face was nearly as red as his suit.
He was about to come up with a quick rebuttal when an alarm sounded from Catalina's watch. She pressed a small button and gave an empty smile.
"I'm afraid that our meeting has to end now, I have previous engagement that requires my immediate attention"
He raised an eyebrow in suspicion be decided not to ask, he just leaned down and picked up his suit jacket and held out his hand.
"In that case Miss Evans I will take my leave" she shook his hand firmly
"Thankyou for coming Tony, we have some more details to go over so we have to schedule another time to meet"
He smiled slyly.
"Why don't you come over to my house tomorrow night we can have dinner and go over the finer details"
Catalina was about to reply when she stumbled a bit and had to grab hold of the desk for support. Tony moved to help her but she held up her hand in a stop motion.
"I'm fine; I just need to have some coffee." She stated with a weak smile
He didn't look quite convinced.
"Really I am, I'll come by your house at about 8"
He reluctantly turned and walked out of her office, Catalina didn't move until she saw him get into his car and drive off. When he was out of sight he legs buckled and she collapsed onto the floor. Sylia knelt down beside her, concern was written all over her virtual face.
"Catalina, you've got to get into the energy stream your nanites are running on low"
She looked up at her virtual assistant and got shakily to her feet.
"Ok activate the energy stream and set the parameters to full, I'll need all the energy I can get for when I test the hard suite again".
Catalina locked her office door and sat back in her large office chair. A strange tubular device came down from the ceiling above her and stopped about 1 meter from her head and a stream of blue energy shot out from the device and was concentrated on the top of Catalina's head.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and she started convulsing. Sylia was watching the entire time monitoring Catalina's vital signs. The energy stream lasted for about 15 minutes, when Catalina sat up again she was quite pale but felt a lot better. Once a week she had to spend 15 minutes in a high level energy stream that fuelled the nanites that were in her body.
An accident in one of her fathers laboratories had left Catalina with microscopic bioorganic robots in her system, these nanites became permanently integrated in all of her vital organs, circulatory, respiratory and lymphatic systems. Unfortunately she had no control over them and the energy starved robots began living off her own, her father had to surgically implant a small micro chip in the base of her skull in her medulla oblongata so that she could gain control.
When the nanites were running on full her body was in perfect health, but once they became starved again she became very weak and in the beginning had almost died a couple of times. She had yet to find a permanent solution to the nanites energy problems but for now the energy stream got the job done; maybe she could get a look at the Arc reactor technology.
Later that afternoon when she had returned to her home she went down into her work shop to check on project HALO an armoured suit that had been designed to her own physical specifications. She had been working on the suit for a couple of years now and had been ready for a final test when Tony Stark had made his I am Iron Man announcement. So now it seemed as though she was copying him, although his suit had provided her with a unique opportunity to make some upgrades to hers.
One of her company's satellites had made a detailed analysis of his suit during an extended flight over Bahrain; it had given her the chance to look at each individual component. Her original suit had been made of heavier armour and had not been as form fitting, since then she had added more state of the art weaponry. Concussion pads on her knuckles and on the front of her feet, laser ribbon cutters that came out of the back of her helmet, retractable diamond edged blades that were housed under the concussion pads. The blades reached about a foot in length and could slice a hair in two by barely touching it. Her suit was also equipped with information gathering instruments connection wires and cables, large memory capacity and the suit was automatically tied in to Sylvia's main frame so she was always being monitored.
She also had a barrage of ammunition and various other gadgets tied into the suit. Its flight capabilities were extraordinary, faster than any air craft ever designed and her upgraded armour was a lighter and denser material than the gold titanium that stark had used. A platinum alloy that fit her like a glove, it really didn't leave much to the imagination.
She wore a skin tight inner suit that connected her to every circuit in the hard suit; the inner suit had a magnetic strip that connected to the implant in the back of her head. The suit actually ran off the power provided by the nanites.
She pulled on the inner suit and stepped into the hard suit revelling at the feeling of it closing up and encasing her body, every point of her body was connected. She flexed her fingers and wrists, getting a feeling of the suit and making sure that everything was in working order. She watched the display screen with in the optical relay of the helmet.
"Sylia are you there?" she asked.
"I've been uploaded and we are ready to go" called the distinctive voice of her assistant.
"How are the sky's looking?"
"There's a high pressure cold front approaching from the south but it shouldn't be a problem, and there's heavy air traffic in the vicinity of the specified flight area"
She smiled to her self and walked into a small round chamber much like an elevator shaft as the door shut she felt a surge of electrical energy build up around her, the floor under her feet fell away and he hovered for a split second be fore being catapulted up out of the shaft and into the open skies. While it was not required for this model to be catapulted in order to gain full flight momentum, she still used the system for the thrill of the ride.
Meanwhile back at Tony Starks house he him self had suited up for a flight as well, unknown to each other they had plotted flight paths that ultimately intersected each other over Moscow. He had shot off about 20 minutes before Catalina, so he was a ways of from interception.
She reached Mac5 in under7.5 seconds and was flying faster than any radar could detect, when she returned to more conventional slight speed she was picked up by radar over St Petersburg and the Air Force put through a call to Iron Man.
Hello
Tony, its Rhodes
Oh hey Rhodey what's up?
Nothin much, we just got an unknown craft that came up on radar near your position and wanted you to check it out.
Any idea what it might be?
Well it's too small to be a jet and to quick to be a UAV. At first we thought it was you but it's smaller than your suit.
Think it might be this Iron Maiden character.
Maybe…so can you check it out and get back to us
Sure, hey after this you and me gotta go get trashed at the Golden Banana
You buyin?
Yeah…
I'm in.
Sweet, over and out
What?
Sorry, I always wanted to say that
Ok Tony, go do your thing.
Iron Man cleared for supersonic flight and soared off to intercept the unknown bogie; he couldn't help laughing in joy as he shot through the clouds. His enjoyment was interrupted when JARVIS spoke up.
"Sorry to interrupt Sir but we are approaching the unknown craft and should intercept with in thirty seconds"
"Thankyou JARVIS"
Looking out his view screen he saw a small blue figure straight ahead of him, he altered speed until he was flying neck and neck with it. He turned his head and had a good look at the other person; he could see with out a doubt that it was a woman.
"JARVIS, I think that it's a woman"
"A very astute observation sir"
"Very funny, attempt radio contact"
"Link is established"
"Unknown flyer this is Iron Man, please respond"
"Hi there you have reached the voice mail of Iron Maiden, she currently doesn't give a shit if you're Iron Man so please leave a message at the tone and then kindly fuck off"
The radio shut off and she shot ahead of him, he swore to himself and followed her. He pulled ahead and stopped directly inform of her forcing Iron Maiden to stop in her tracks. The two armour plated flyers hovered face to face, an air borne stand off between two titans…so to speak. Iron Man was the first to break the silence.
"Hi there"
"Hi"
"So my buddies at the air force were just wondering what you were doing up here"
"I'm ordering a pizza, getting a couple of drinks…what does it look like I'm doing"
"Ok, look maybe we should just land and talk this out face to face"
"Nice try Stark, but I have no interest in telling anyone who I am. I'm just testing out my new flight components and seeing if I can do some damage control, same as you"
"Ok, well that explains…"
He didn't get to finish his sentence before Iron Maiden in a sudden burst of speed shot off in the opposite direction, before he could get Jarvis to track her, the suit activated a stealth device and she disappeared.
Rhodey?
Hey Tony, what'd you find out?
Well…it wasn't a UAV.
So was it that Iron Maiden chick?
Yep
So who is she?
Dunno she wasn't really in a chatty mood.
Well what did she say?
Said she was testing some components and doing some damage control
Ok, we'll do some recon and work the rest out later
Nice, see at the Banana.
He turned and headed back to Malibu, deciding to pick up a couple of burgers on the way freaking out the acne ridden teenager sitting in the drive through booth. Like anyone would believe that Iron Man had flown through to buy a cheese burger and fries.
Catalina landed down in the catapult tube and ejected herself from the hardsuit; she exited the tube and almost collapsed into a desk chair. Sylia appeared in front of her looking concerned.
"Catalina what's wrong? I tracked your flight and nothing happened apart from your confrontation with Iron Man"
Catalina sighed and ran her long slender fingers through her hair.
"I don't know what happened; in my hardsuit I cease to be Catalina. I become part of the suit, when that mask covers my face I change…I become Iron Maiden"
Sylia frowned and rolled her eyes.
"That would be the perfect quote for an expose, but right now might I suggest you take off that inner suit and rest. The nanites may heal your body but it is up to you to heal your mind"
Catalina sniggered and did as she was instructed; pausing for a moment to think.
"You know I just realised the irony of the situation"
"And what would that be?"
A stupid grin broke out on her face.
"Well I'm wearing this suit to try and save peoples lives, and the news papers have named me after a medieval torture device designed to end lives"
Sylia slapped her virtual head in exasperation.
"Only you would find that amusing"
Catalina smirked and placed the inner suit in the specially designed cleaning unit, being that she was to tired to give a damn she just turned and headed up into the main living area of her house stark naked. She paused in front of a large mirror and cringed at the sight that she saw.
Although her body was looking in top form as usual, her face looked pale and worn. She had dark circles under her eyes from her lack of sleep and her skin was pasty and dry, she should remind Sylia to lock in a time for a spa and facial treatment. To make matters worse a scar that had been a pain in the ass for Catalina was right now a vivid red against the paleness of her flesh. The scar was a result of a fight she had gotten into on the first day of college, it ran down the right side of her face cutting through her eye and down on to her cheek.
She was lucky that she had not gone blind, some bitch had been making snide comments about her family and generally insulting her, it had resulted in both parties having to get stiches in the infirmary.
It was generally easy to hide with carefully applied make up and strategic hair placement, but when she was ill, tired or had just gotten out of the shower it stuck out like a saw thumb.
She shrugged and got straight into bed, sleeping in the nude had become a habit.
Another habit was putting on that perfection façade for the world, she was a young woman running a multi million dollar company in what was considered a mans world. Having to remain indifferent and cold seems like Ice Maiden was an accurate nickname.
As she drifted of to sleep her last thoughts were what would Tony think if he saw her as she really was, full of self doubt, and wishing that for once she could just wake up in the morning and not have any worries. You never know…he might actually understand.
End Chapter 2.