Disclaimer: I do not own anything that I have written. Yep, that is right, I own not even one iota of the below work.

Warnings: Cannon violence, sexuality, and blood. Possibly worse language than the actual movie. Will contain homosexual relationships.

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Chapter Seven

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A trill that Tony could use to farther his pursuits, and for the first time Tony Stark was starting to realize just how aptly named Project Proving was. He would prove to Rhodes, Obie, Howard, and anyone else that thought of him as less, just how wrong they were.

...

The trill was fading.

For the next few days, Tony worked, did science, and took care of himself reluctantly though it was. JARVIS reminding Tony to eat, work out, and when he needed to leave the workshop to get some sleep. The whole area had somewhat of a desolate feeling to it, though. A whole, big mansion, and there Tony Stark was.

Alone.

Sure, he had JARVIS and the kid-bots and Tony did love them. They were his creations, but humans needed contact with other humans. Tony did not really want to think about the details, but he knew that in depth studies were made into the matter. That was not to say that he really wanted anyone around at the moment, he did not. It did however; help to expedite his current... Depression, though the admittance tasted sour, even in Tony's mind. Besides, Wade was coming back soon, anytime now even.

And the success with the gauntlets was enough to keep him running until his only source of human interaction came back from killing his target.

Tony did think about talking to Wade about that, but he would not have any leg to stand on. Besides, just because the inventour was constantly reinventing himself and his technology to follow Yinsen's wish, didn't mean he should force those beliefs and actions onto others.

"Sir, you've been staring at the ceiling for fifteen minutes now, may I ask what is so fascinating?" JARVIS asked his tone so clearly sarcastic and inherited from his creatour.

"Right, time to get to work." Tony pushed himself out of bed and left the room without a backwards glace. At some point, JARVIS would have one of the kid-bots go in there and make the bed. However, honestly, Tony never understood why people made such a fuss about a slightly wrinkled bed. The only reason it ever was made would be that JARVIS was one of those people who took some sort of offence to the idea of a single wrinkle.

Tony took a quick shower, got dressed, brushed his teeth –

"J, give me a black out." Tony suddenly ordered.

The windows immediately turned black, the lights in the room went off, and there would have been nothing to light the room if not for Tony's arc-reactor which shined slightly through his band tee-shirt, well... That and the most recent development.

It was faint, eerie in a weird sort of way, but considering there was no other light in the room...

Tony's eyes were lit slightly in the same light blue that coloured the arc-reactor.

He knew his eyes; they had been the same all his life. They were blue, a light blue that was uncommon, it gained him many compliments. Still, Tony liked to think that he would have noticed his eyes giving off such a glow if it had been happening for all that long.

"J, I'm assuming you're seeing this?" Tony asked rhetorically, somewhere between panicking because of some weird thing happening to his body, and the insane curiosity that made Tony want to place himself under a microscope and just understand what is going on.

The lights in the bathroom turned back on, and the blue-eyed man studied himself in the mirror, and his eyes were lighter coloured than before, still giving off that subtle glow, though it was subtle. If it were not Tony's own body, he probably would not have noticed at all.

"Sir, I believe it would be best if you went to the workshop so that we can do a full run down." The British accent sounded just a bit worried though.

Tony forced his emotional reaction down and gave a scoff, "Yeah, no kidding huh. Just when you think things can't possibly get worse..."

"Perhaps jinxing yourself isn't the right course of action right now."

"Of course, how could I forget my logic based AI believes in superstitions." Tony shot back, but was jogging his way down the stairs to the workshop faster than he would if Stane himself was alive and running after him.

The workshop was a chaotic mess as usual. Tables lay there, several prototypes of StarkGlasses lining them, all of the prototypes had been thrown to the side for not being what Tony wanted, small tweaks were needed, and to be expected. After all, this was the first time someone would be selling something like this to the masses. It was going to change many things when it did come out. Governments especially were not going to like this one, but they would eventually get over it.

Those thoughts however, Tony soon discarded as unimportant. His new freakish, glowing eyes were definitely going to require his full attention.

Tony noticed a whirling sound, and knew that JARVIS was starting the scanning equipment up. During the poisoning, the inventor had made, and installed, several different and more advanced medical equipment technologies into the workshop, allowing JARVIS to scan him well he worked, so that they could both work toward a cure together.

"My first impression, before any results come back, is that it isn't just your eyes affected. Some of the wrinkles you had before have faded –"

"Let's not go that far, J, I never had wrinkles. They were a figment of your imagination." The human interrupted.

"Yes, I remember you programming that into me, it was right next to the Skynet Protocol." Before Tony could reply again, however, JARVIS continued, "Looking into my memory banks, I've also found several occurrences where you have healed faster than you should, as well as the timing that this started. The timeline does, coincidently enough; match up with the new core change."

"Right, let me know when the scans are done, and then I'll go piss in a cup and draw some blood. I want a full DNA work up, as well as a full comparison of everything; I want the perfect picture painted of before, and after." Tony ordered, but it was more thoughtful, as if thinking about what he needed done as he spat the words. Mostly though, his mind went toward what he would do if the new core were having some sort of horrible adverse effect to him. Healing was nice, glow-eyes were not that bad, but Tony really did not want to end up growing some sort of second dick coming out of his forehead, or something like that.

Immature thought, perhaps, but it did help put the stakes in mind.

Stakes being the chance that Tony had taken when putting the new core in his chest for a test drive before making sure that there wouldn't be any horrible effects, without even testing it first at all.

So really, fingers crossed that this was not the Universes way at giving the Stark his fair share of karma and panic.

Instead, Tony forced himself to think about some of the instances that JARVIS had been talking about. Surely enough, especially since Wade had come into his life with training, Tony had been healing quicker. He hadn't really allowed his mind to think much of it, why would he? It is not every day you suddenly start to heal faster. Still, the nose incident, bruises disappearing far faster than they should, muscles that were overstrained being fine in a matter of hours – But the time that it took too heal was slowly shrinking, now that Tony thought about it.

Oh universe, Tony was the lobster in cold water that got used to the heat as it was slowly brought up. Dead before it even noticed that it was being cooked alive.