7. Stark Expo:

The knocking at her apartment door was getting bloody annoying – even more so because it was five bloody O'clock in the morning.

"God smite it, Jarvis, don't you have an anti-Stark setting or something?" she muttered darkly; now half awake.

~I regret to inform you, Miss Star, that I do not have such a feature.~ The mechanical voice of JARVIS answered her.

"Crap. Well tell that bugger to piss off or I'll sue." Jiru rolled over and jammed her head under her pillow. Minutes ticked by as silence ensued, more time passed and the dimensional walker smiled drowsily to herself and went back to sleep.

Finding herself in a golden-light room, Jiru watched as the black-haired man lounged calmly on a green and gold divan, silently read some foreign book. Piercing green eyes cast the owner's focus on the yellowed pages and its black ink writing.

"You f*cking sellout."She stately calmly after a few silent seconds. "You are a huge, lying, sh*t-eating sell-out, you know that Loki?"

"Hm." The gold-ly illuminated god grunted, not taking his green eyes off the page.

"Not only did you f*ck me over THRICE, you screwed up on getting back to me on earth. What happened back there with those ugly Chitauri? You sent me to Earth and then what? Got flipping brain-washed by sh*t-ugly aliens. How'd that happened?"

"Things spiraled beyond my control, Lovey." Loki answered her. "It was all to protect you."

"Right, like that line's going to fly." Her scowl deepened as she moved over to Loki's side and grabbed the book. "You know how I hate deception and shit. All those months in the log cabin, you played me; played me against S.H.I.E.L.D., against the Avengers and against my friends…and now I have nothing. No diamond fragment, no left arm, no trust in myself…"

Loki tutted and moved to sit up, looking her square in the eyes. "Whose fault is that, my dear? Is it that horrible a thing to admit to? You chose to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, Lovey; chose to use the Tesseract's power to save a pitiful human city. And for what? A deed well done; the trust of the Avengers? Your so-called allies keep that fact hidden from the world, keep you a secret. You fell back to me; and I did what I could to save your life."

"Loki…I can't…"

"YOU cannot what, Lovey? Face the fact that you are so deeply, hopelessly, undeniably enamored with me?" Here, Loki shot to his feet and rushed her, pinning her back to a golden light wall. "Is it so difficult to admit you care for me?"

Staring at Loki's ice-chiseled façade, she shivered in raw emotion, lust playing down her astral nerves. He wore nothing much but a grey-green shirt and pants, his normally slicked back hair was long, worn down and unkempt and still he stoked the fire of arousal in her gut.

"Tell me you care not for me." He purred into her ears. "Tell me you never want to see me again, and I will make it so."

"…"

"Wakey, wakey, sleepy head."

"Oh for the love of god, Stark. Can you just stop being stalky for ONE day." The dimensional walker rolled over in her bed, wide-awake, glaring at the clock. It had only been an hour. "Just one day…"

"Nope, you've got a big day ahead of you. Let's get started early."

Glaring silently at the man sitting across the table – watching her as she ate her bowl of cereal - Jiru wondered for the tenth time that morning, just why she put up with the stalking billionaire playboy genius philanthropist. She had to admit, though, was slightly amusing to watch him fidget with the napkin container and its napkin-y contents like he had full blown autism. It was weird to see such movement from a man wearing a sky-blue who-knew-how-expensive suit, black tie and surfer sunglasses.

"Are you done yet?" the man across her blurted, after a few more of her silent spoonfuls.

"No."

"How about now?"

"My god, Tony, what crawled up your ass?" Jiru exhaled, slightly annoyed.

"Nothing crawled up my ass." The billionaire sat bolt upright and scowled. "I'm just waiting for you to get ready so I can take you to Stark Expo."

"No."

"Please?" Tony removed his sunglasses and gave her pleading eyes.

"Dunno how much fun you'd have with somebody who'd have no clue in that kind of stuff." She shrugged with one arm. She had, since Tony had mentioned 'Stark Expo' two days ago, researched into the phrase and was surprised to discover that it was a huge exposé: an inventor's convention of technological proportions. Billionaire-paying techies all strove to have their inventions featured in Stark Expo, catering to potential buyers in the government and otherwise. Stuff she hadn't the foggiest clue over.

"Just as much fun I'd have if you were a Mini-Me." Tony glared at her comment.

"How would you know?"

"I just know. I'm Tony Stark after all." He grinned back at her. "Besides, I want you to go to Stark Expo, I have a surprise for you."

"Really?"

Stark grinned in answer as he lugged a metallic suitcase off the floor beside his feet and clunked it onto the table. Jiru winced, hoping the metal wouldn't damage the wood too much.

"As much as I love the whole Iron Suit thing, Tony, I don't need one at the moment."

"It's not a suit, superstar, it's…" The genius swirled the case until the handle faced her before clicking it open. Peering into the sleek attaché case, she stared incredulously at the peachy-tan thing which was resting in a flexed 'V' shape.

"Oh geez, is that what I think it is?" She groaned into her single hand. The half-nanosecond it took her to fully identify the fleshy thing, she was already in disbelief.

"Yup, it's your new arm." Tony stated gleefully.

Pushing her bowl of nasty milky cheerios away and leaning forward to get a better look at the pseudo-arm, Jiru snorted.

"Ok, if you weren't creepy-stalky before, you officially are now. This…isn't real, right?" The level of detail the disembodied arm showed was stunning or very VERY creepy – depending on the point of view.

"Of course it's NOT real, but I made it to look real."

"I can obviously see that, Stark. I mean, Creeep-py. It's my arm again. Freckles and all."

"Yes, yes it is." Stark grinned, adjusting his blue suit. "I spent months working on it since Banner found you in Nevada. Remember when I had Jarvis scan you at Stark Tower on your first day of work last year? Well, I still had those scans, so I thought to myself 'Why not invent the next big thing in prosthesis limbs?' So I did…just for you."

While Tony was monologue-ing, she had several thoughts running through her head. Thoughts like: 'Nevada, Loki, duh, of course Tony wouldn't mention LOKI. The genius obviously had jealousy issues.' 'Tony made my arm a fake arm? Ew' Like Seriously, Ew, Ew. Seriously, seriously Ew.'

"Superstar, you ready to go?"

"Fine, I'll put the arm on if you quit bugging me." Jiru caved in and stood up. "Then we can go to Stark Expo and do whatever it is you wanna do."