Midtown Manhattan, the top-floor office of the Eye Society headquarters.
Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows from the east, illuminating the entire office. Sharon Carter sat at the secretary's desk sorting documents, her pen scratching along their margins.
Behind his desk, Yongye reclined in his swivel chair with both feet on the desktop and a cup of iced Coke in his hand. On the tablet in front of him, Tony's "a real man for thirty seconds" video played on repeat.
The smile on his lips had never faded since he posted the video and opened it.
"Thirty seconds!"
He murmured the number again and took another gulp of iced Coke. The bubbles burst in his throat with a sweet, delicious rush.
A faint rustling came from beneath the desk.
Selina Kyle crawled out from under it, her short, dark brown hair clinging messily to the sides of her neck. A lingering flush suffused her dark green eyes, and her cat-eared hood sat crookedly to one side.
She stood and stretched. Her cat tail... more precisely, the decorative tail attached to the back of her tactical underlayer, swayed slightly behind her.
"Mr. President, can we get started now?"
Yongye turned his head. His gaze slid over her face, flushed from her recent exertions, settled on her faintly trembling fingertips, then rose to meet her dark green eyes. The smile on his lips shifted from pleasure to blatant amusement.
"What's the rush?"
He reached out and gently patted her head twice, the gesture carrying an unmistakable air of domineering control.
"You didn't come here just for that. Go on, what did Batman want you to ask this time?"
Selina's eyelashes fluttered.
She did have business to discuss. Before she came, Batman had suddenly emerged from Gotham's sewers and pressed an encrypted communicator