Unfinished Gems

Iron Maiden - 3

Pepper felt like she was going crazy. Fortunately it wasn't just her. Rhodey saw it too, but it had taken him a bit to admit it.

Jazz had managed to seamlessly join Tony's circle of 'close associates' without setting off any of the usual red flags.

She wasn't after his money...Tony had checked and outside of paying normal bills, the girl almost never spent any of the cash she made with the patents he had helped her to acquire.

She honestly didn't care about his fame...she was one of the few people who treated Tony as a person, rather than someone who was famous. If anything, she seemed to dislike it and went out of her way to avoid attracting attention, which Tony seemed to thrive on. She had a very distinct dislike of reporters, as they had found out.

(Tony would never again try to drag Jazz into the limelight after the three hours he spent glued to the toilet with some rather impressive diarrhea and a lack of any decent toilet paper).

She wasn't after his inventions. She had enough trouble with her tablet or her laptop whenever they crashed, never mind the phone when Tony got back at her for the prank she played on him.

Jazz had given up trying to figure out what was wrong with it and had happily gone old school to Tony's annoyance. Unlike most teenagers, she wasn't that dependent on her phone and had somehow found a way to throw paper airplanes far enough to reach the recipient with whatever message needed to be sent.

He was still trying to figure out how she pulled that one off. The aerodynamics alone should have kept the plane from travelling as far as it needed to go!

Jazz had been there for nine months, and to be honest Pepper and Rhodey kept seeing her as a younger, female version of Tony. Just with a far more down to earth attitude and mischievous personality.

Which was why Rhodey had a plan. For some reason Jazz resembled Tony in a very strong way and they wanted to confirm whether or not the two were related.

If they were, Tony was certainly going to be thrilled. He didn't really have much family to speak of, so if she turned out to be a cousin he would be over the moon. If not, they were just going to chalk up the similarities as a really weird coincidence and leave it at that.

When Jazz tossed her disposable cup (which had Chai, despite Tony's attempts at converting her to the wonders of coffee, the heathen) Rhodey collected it as a DNA sample and then sent it off to the lab.

He sent out a private order for it to be compared to the other samples they had on file...one of which happened to be Tony's in case they needed to identify his body. He was, after all, a very important weapons developer to the government.

For three days, the two made no indication of the fact they had swiped Jazz's cup for a DNA sample.

Then Rhodey came to Pepper on the fourth day with a piece of paper and a very odd look on his

face.

"What?"

"There was a partial match," he said.

"So she is his cousin," said Pepper relieved. She wasn't going crazy after all.

"Not exactly," said Rhodey.

Pepper blinked. Then her face went owlish in shock.

"You can't be serious."

Rhodey handed her the paper.

There was an almost forty-nine percent match to Tony's own profile. Pepper sat down hard in shock.

"She's his daughter?!"