Spider-Man landed softly on the roof of Stark's New York mansion, dropping down to the ground and wondering to himself why he simply didn't land outside the door to begin with.

"Well..." Spider-Man said "We need to stretch this adventure out as long as we can somehow" He rang the doorbell of the house and was greeted by a friendly-looking scanning system that cast a grid of neon blue lighting down onto him before flashing sporadically.

"Hang on, lemme get my phone out" Spider-Man said "I wanna be in on this rave"

"Target identified: Spider-Man" a robotic voice, not the voice of JARVIS, said.

"First off, I don't like the word target, makes me feel uncomfortable" Spider-man said, pointing a finger at the machine ""And secondly, does JARVIS know Tony's seeing you behind his back and will you kill me if I tell him?" The machine remained vocally silent, merely producing beeping sounds as it continued to analyse Spider-Man for reasons that were unknown to the costumed hero.

"Wow, I bet you're a fun guy to talk to at parties, aren't you?" Spider-Man sighed, crossing his arms and tapping his foot.

"Its not an A.I kid, it won't respond to you" Tony's voice came through a speaker.

"I can see that now, 'Intelligence' clearly isn't in this things description" he nodded "Can I come in, I've got something I want to talk to you about"

"Can you pay the toll to enter?" Stark asked.

"Can you pay for the replacement door when I kick the fucker down?" Spider-Man asked in response. There was a brief whirring sound before a very large and very shooty-looking gun popper out from the wall, followed by another.

And another. Oh Joy!

"What was that?" Tony asked in a mocking tone.

"I said I adore everything you do and would trade my right arm to be even half as smart as you are" Spider-Man said, holding his hands up in surrender "And I love the beard"

"That's better, come on in kid" Stark laughed. The door swung open and then closed behind him, as doors tended to do in this world of wonder, and a small dish extended from the wall, complete with JARVIS's wonderful voice.

"Please deposit the toll sir" he said.

"JARVIS!" Peter exclaimed happily "Its great to see you and all but you're not really gonna make me pay the toll are you?"

"I'm afraid I must inform you that the artillery stationed outside can retract into this area of the house" JARVIS said in a polite tone.

"How much do I owe you pal?" Spider-Man asked begrudgingly.

"Three fifty" JARVIS responded.

"Is that inflation adjusted?" Spider-Man asked, taking his bag off his bag and routing around for his wallet.

"Your humour is duly noted" JARVIS commented.

"Jeez, tough crowd" he said, taking out the money and dropping it into the bowl "Don't spend it all on ladies JARVIS"

"Will do sir" JARVIS said, finally cracking a joke.

"That's my boy!" Spider-Man explained happily.

"I am a computer system, not a boy" JARVIS responded.

"Almost" Spider-Man sighed "Almost had a bit of banter going there... anyway, what's Tony doing?"

"He's down in the lab working on a new type of software" JARVIS responded.

"Ahhh, he's coding in the basement?" Spider-Man asked "Can't beat the old methods can you?"

"I can search several more efficient ways to program new types of software if you wish?" JARVIS offered. Spider-Man looked at the wall where the dish was still protruding and put a hand to his face.

"Just... never mind" he growled, walking away from the wall. Spider-Man used his great mind to analyse the room and think of every architectural layout he'd researched in his younger years to try and find the most efficient and realistic location for the lab to be in this mansion.

The task was extremely arduous for the young genius.

After looking to the left and seeing a stairwell labelled 'Lab' Spider-Man walked over to it and began to traverse the distance down, into the depths of technology and awesomeness. The first thing he was greeted by was a lack of blaring music, something Stark had been quoted as always having on when working on anything he was developing.

"Tony?" Spider-Man called out.

"Over here Pete!" Tony said from behind a multiple monitor set-up.

"So the Avengers told you who I was?" Spider-Man said, webbing a spare chair over to him and pulling his mask off.

"Yup, its usually seen as a good idea for team mates to know who's who" Tony said, speaking and scrolling through several paragraphs of code at the same time "Lets them work together when they're out of uniform"

"Fair enough" Peter shrugged "What're you working on? JARVIS mentioned a new type of software, am I good enough for specifics?"

"Pete, you're not good enough for anything besides fetching the coffee and answering the door" Tony laughed.

"So you'd trust me with three fifty calibre automated turrets mounted on the door?" Peter asked, crossing his arms with a cocked eyebrow.

"Never mind then" Tony said taking a deep breath as he punched in a few more lines of code and then hooked up a small, circular device to his computer.

"So, are you gonna tell me what you're working on?" Peter asked.

"Sure, its an new type of A.I that Stark Industries, that means me, have been trying to create" Stark explained, grabbing a cup of coffee from his desk and sipping it.

"What d'you need a new one for?" Peter asked "You've already got JARVIS upstairs, he gets the job done"

"I know that, but he's got his limitations, you've noticed those haven't you?" Tony asked, looking back at Peter.

"Yeah, though his sense of humour might just be the best I've seen outside of a piece of fucking drywall" Peter said with a nod.

"Too true, so this new A.I I've been working on is gonna be one of the best things I've ever done" Stark continued "Its gonna be an evolving A.I" Peter looked at Stark with a surprised expression before asking a good question.

"You have seen, I don't know, every sci-fi movie involving evolving A.I right?" Peter asked "It gets so smart that it believes it doesn't need to take orders any more, tries to wipe out humanity? I know we don't have any James Bond-esque agents to stop that kind of thing from happening"

"I know right? We only have crummy superheroes and an off switch Peter" Stark said, shooting him an angry glare "Whatever will we do?"

"I think you're missing the point her!" Peter exclaimed loudly, this triggering an alert status in which another turret sprang up from the floor, its sights locked onto Peter.

"How many of these frickin' things do you have in this house?!" Peter demanded.

"Stand down" Stark said with a wave of his hand, the turret responding and retracting back into the floor. Peter blinked twice before looking back at Stark with a question on his mind.

"How much did that cost to make?" Peter asked.

"About forty-five grand for the gun and a hundred bucks for the sensor used to operate it" Stark answered.

"Seems relatively cheap for a laser sensor" Peter said with a confused expression.

"I bought a Kinect and just used that" Tony answered, running the program through a few basic lines of code to see if there were any performance errors.

"Bullshit did you use a Kinect for that" Peter said with a shake of his head.

"I did" Tony nodded.

"No. No you didn't" Peter asserted.

"Why is it so hard to grasp that concept?" Stark asked irritably, turning to face Peter with his own agitated look.

"Because the Kinect never fucking works" Peter said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the spot where the turret had been moments earlier "That does"

"Maybe I altered it a little" Stark shrugged.

"A little?" Peter asked "The Kinect was the same piece of technology that would detect four players while staring at a fucking wall, I don't think you altered it, I think you actually programmed it because it sure as hell wasn't before"

"It was a pretty shit piece of tech" Tony nodded eventually "What was its slogan again? 'You are the controller' or something mind-numbingly stupid like that, right?"

"To be honest I think that the Political-Correctness-Brigade jumped on Microsoft with a claim that it was excluding wheelchair-bound people from social and sporting activities with friends" Peter said with a shake of his head "Because you know I've lost count of the amount of wheelchair bound people that have told me how bad they felt for not being picked to play baseball or represent their high school in the swimming tournaments" Tony looked over to Peter with a blank expression, the two of them staring blankly for a long second before smiles cracked onto their faces.

"I shouldn't laugh at that" Tony said, shaking his head with a grin "I really shouldn't laugh at that"

"Oh come on, everybody loves to make taboo jokes like that, I think it comes third to racist and Nine-Eleven jokes, we've all done it" Peter shrugged. There was silence for a second before Peter spoke up again, a wide grin on his face.

"D'you wanna hear one?" Peter asked "I've got a good one"

"I know I'm gonna regret this... go ahead" Stark said.

"Right... What's the difference between a cow and Nine-Eleven?" Peter asked, happier than he'd been in a while.

"I don't know, what?" Tony asked.

"You can't milk a cow for thirteen years" Peter said with a huge grin. Tony screwed his eyes shut and used every ounce of his self control to try, and fail, to not laugh at the joke.

"Where did you even hear that?" Tony asked.

"My friend Harry and I came up with them when we were in detention at one point" Peter said, smiling at the happy memories "We've got loads of them"

"Can we just talk about the A.I again please?" Tony asked "I've done many things to get me into hell and I don't want laughing at the deaths of thousands of people"

"Thousands? Pfff, I've got a few Holocaust jokes if you wanna hear those?" Peter offered.

"Parker!" Tony snapped "Knock it off"

"Right, sorry, the A.I and how its a stupid idea" Peter said "What's the point of an evolving A.I when you weigh up all the risks?"

"There isn't one... I just want one" Tony shrugged.

"Wow... that's kinda dickish to be honest" Peter said with a nod of his head.

"Are you seriously going to give me a lecture about the moral high ground after what you just came out with?" Tony asked.

"Yes, because not only am I offensive as shit I'm also a massive hypocrite" Peter grinned "So, one quick question, you've always named your A.I right?"

"Yeah"

"What are you gonna call this one?" Peter asked.

"I'm thinking of naming this one relative to what its actual purpose is, instead of what I did with JARVIS" Tony answered.

"Why? What does JARVIS stand for?"

"Just A Rather Very Intelligent System" Tony shrugged, going back to his work.

"Are you serious?" Peter asked.

"Yes I'm serious, I'm the guy who has the superhero identity of Iron Man because its easy to remember and one of my most powerful armours is called the Hulk Buster because it was designed to bust the hulk" Tony said "I'm not the name guy, alright?"

"Its not that its not creative, its just that its the most brilliant and shit thing I've ever heard in my life" Peter said "What are you gonna call the next one?"

"See, this is the one I'm proud of" Tony said with a grin "This one is called the Computer Aided Software Search Ingenuity Engine"

"So... CASSIE?" Peter asked with a raised eyebrow "I guess that is pretty clever"

"Thank you" Tony smiled.

"So what are you planning to do with it?" Peter asked before asking another question "Is it gonna be programmed as a she? Because JARVIS uses a male voice"

"I think with a name like CASSIE it'll have to be female" Tony nodded "And as for what I'm going to do I think I'm going to get her to be the main A.I in the Stark Industries H.Q, I'll make sure she's programmed to be proficient in business, economics and accounting so that others can talk to her about it and anything she doesn't know, I hope she'll be able to learn"

"That sounds very advantageous" Peter nodded "I hope it all goes well"

"Thank you, now is there anything else you came here to talk about?" Tony asked.

"Yeah, I was taking pictures of an interview with the Fantastic Four before I was called away to fight this new guy called the Vulture, tell you about that some other time, and before I went I noticed that Sue Storm was dicking around with a piece of unlicensed Iron Man armour, bootlegged all to hell, but still the same tech" Peter explained "You wouldn't know anything about that?"

"As for the FF having Stark tech, I can explain that, but in regards to our scuffle with that other piece of armour that you found on the thug I've been able to find out where it came from" Tony said, pushing his chair, on wheels, across the floor and over to another computer.

"Because opening more than one file on a computer is way too mainstream" Peter sighed.

"This one doesn't get nearly enough love" Stark chuckled "C'mere" Peter got up and walked over to the computer, seeing Stark opening a file that contained a picture of a man he recognized and a few that he didn't.

"I know him, that's... Alistair Smythe" Peter said "He's one of the higher ups at Oscorp"

"I know, and he's also the one that's diverting the orders for Iron Man tech from my manufacturers in China" Tony said.

"You make the suits in a sweatshop?" Peter asked.

"No, I was banned from making Iron Man suits by the American government, dear Luna was the one to thank for that as she was a little salty about our break-up, but my lawyers were able to find a loophole that allowed me to construct them overseas in the Eastern branch of Stark Industries, the building itself being called the Shintonian Stark Tower, and then ship them back into America without the law being able to touch me for it"

"You and Luna dated at one point?" Peter asked in a confused tone.

"Only for a few weeks, she was kinda freaky in bed and always wanted to be on top" Stark shrugged "Not my thing"

"But you two were friends for a while right?" Peter asked "Before that?"

"Yeah, why?" Stark asked with a sideways glance.

"How did you manage to melt the wall of ice around her?"

"Being rich and having a great reputation in bed" Stark said "And the fact that she hadn't had sex since the mid nineties"

"Was she a girl that talked a lot about her ex-boyfriends?" Peter asked.

"No, but she did lock up when I asked her about him, she wouldn't give me his name and only referred to him as the Feign-Man, or whatever it was was, said it had something to do with his career and that she swore to never speak about him again after what he did to her"

"I bet that killed the mood" Peter chuckled.

"Like you wouldn't believe" Tony nodded "But anyway, the problem with the missing Iron Man tech is that it has to be shipped though international waters, obviously, and the only ships cleared to carry what can be seen as contraband outside of international waters are a company called Orion Shipping, which was a shipping company set up in ninety-three by none other than Norman Osborn"

"Right, so that's how Smythe is getting hold of the Iron Man armour... but if you know its him then why don't you just call the cops or get S.H.I.E.L.D to stop him?"

"Because S.H.I.E.L.D have a policy that doesn't just hurt you remember? This kind of thing doesn't get picked up or cared about my their radar, so I'm on my own" Tony sighed, scratching his beard "And I can't get the cops on him because he leaves no evidence of his crimes"

"But you said he steals them?" Peter asked "Can't you just explain to the police about the missing illegal technology and point them at him?"

"No, because he doesn't steal the shipments, he diverts them" Tony said, cutting into Peter's reasoning "The shipments always arrive, just late and with a goodie basket to say sorry"

"So what's he doing with them?" Peter asked.

"He's doing the same thing Hammer Industries tried to do a few years back, he's reverse engineering them and selling them on the street for the big-name criminals to buy and use" Tony stated "Its the reason I can't just call the armour back or turn it off, they're not chipped like mine are"

"But the one we fought, that one was stolen wasn't it?" Peter asked.

"Yeah, because that one was one that I'd made that had been stolen with the counterfeit suits" Tony continued "It was supposed to be delivered, I'm guessing at least, back to Smythe so he could get a suit he could keep to replicate perfectly, unlike the others which he has to keep sending back to avoid getting anyone's attention"

"So... how many of these things are there?" Peter asked "How can we stop him from doing this?"

"Well the easiest option is to stop creating the suits so Smythe stops copying them" Tony said before continuing, not letting Peter speak "But with how quickly he seems to be cranking these things out I think he's got enough experience with the suits to mass produce them, not perfect them, so stopping the shipments is only gonna stop him from perfecting his designs, not stop them all together"

"So, what?" Peter said "The only way we take these things down is to get Smythe arrested and destroy all the plans he has for the suits?"

"It looks that way" Tony nodded "The only problem is that we don't know where he makes them and how many he's sold"

"That is a problem" Peter nodded, folding his arms and staring at the floor "And we can't arrest Smythe because we haven't got anything to pin on him?"

"Yeah, we're kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place" Tony said "We don't even know who's the big baddie buying the suits"

"I might though, I think its the Big Man buying them all" Peter said with a snap of his fingers "And if Smythe is working for the Big Man then that means Smythe might know who the Big Man is"

"We're getting ahead of ourselves here Peter, first we need to find a way to get at Smythe and get him to stop producing the suits" Tony said.

"Right" Peter said, closing his eyes and thinking for a second "I'd be willing to bet money that Smythe isn't exactly cranking these things out in his apartment is he?"

"And if he isn't then he must be making them at work" Tony nodded "So there has to be a lab somewhere in the Oscorp building making them and that kind of production must produce a high production cost and must drain energy like a mother fucker"

"So we just need to take a look at the Oscorp building records and find out which areas are draining the most power and see what's going on, then cross them off if they don't have anything suspicious going on in them" Peter said, clicking his fingers

"Do you have anyone who could help us break into a high security building without leaving a trace?" Tony asked.

"I used to, but she bailed out on me" Peter sighed "Looks like I'm gonna have to do it myself because your armour isn't going to be good for stealth is it?"

"No, sorry Pete" Tony sighed "Look, you get to wherever it is you need to be and I'll draw up a few plans from what I can get out of their system and my connections"

"Good idea" Peter nodded "I'll drop by in a few days and see what you've got" The two of them nodded and Peter pulled his mask back on over his face and headed back up the stairs, knowing that he needed to go see Captain America and then talk to Mary-Jane and apologize for bailing out.

"And Aunt May... Aunt May before Mary-Jane actually" Spider-Man said, leaving the building "Shit this is starting to get complicated" Next Chapter: Training Round Estimated time remaining: 6 Hours, 48 Minutes