Authors Notes: no copyright infringement intended. This is a just for fun project. Feel free to leave reviews and I hope you enjoy!

Bright Eyed Feline

Not many people knew Tony Stark was a cat person. If you looked around his pristine house, you'd assume any animal that dared to shed a hair on the furniture would be shaved and dumped before it knew what happened. At last, that was what Steve had thought when he and the other Avengers moved in. No one had mentioned any kinds of pets other than the large fish tank in one of the upper suites where Tony entertained businessmen. Personally, Steve didn't even think those counted. Strangely though, it turned out Tony was totally welcoming of pets. In fact, about three days after moving in, Steve discovered that at least one pet had been a resident of Stark Tower long before the Avengers.

Natasha had shooed Steve down to Tony's lab to make Iron Man come up and join them for dinner under threat of a painful death at Black Widow's hand. He'd punched in the code and slid into the lab, glancing around for Iron Man himself when he spied the creature sitting right beside a snoozing Tony Stark.

Perched atop one of the most cluttered workbenches like it owned the place was a sleek black cat. It had a white belly and four delicate white socks and shockingly blue eyes. Seeing it made Steve stop in his tracks and stare. The cat simply looked up at him with a strangely intelligent gleam in its eyes, tail tip twitching. Stark was passed out, slumped over the table dead to the world, the cat sitting beside him like some kind of guard. When he finally got himself together and went closer, Steve saw a light blue collar around the cat's neck and a tag. He couldn't see the name but there was a large SI engraved on one side of the tag that Steve assumed stood for Stark Industries.

Shaking Tony's shoulder, Steve couldn't look away from the cat as the billionaire genius jerked awake with a grunt and sat up, hair flattened on one side of his head and sticking up on the other. Tony yawned and stretched, muttering something about stars and stripes, sleepily rubbing the cat's ears as Steve watched. The cat instantly began to purr.

"What'd'ya want?" Tony grumbled, one hand still massaging the cat's ears, the other rubbing his eyes.

Shaking his head, Steve looked away from the cat and down at Tony. "Uh, Tasha says you have to come up and eat or else she'll reinvent Chinese Water Torture," Steve reported.

Tony instantly wrinkled his nose at the mention of food. "She's going to poison us, I know it. What time is it anyway?"

"Almost six thirty," Steve said, glancing again at the cat. It was still staring at him with unwavering blue eyes. "Uh, Stark, what's with the cat?"

"It's Tony," Tony corrected, almost before Steve finished speaking, scrubbing his hands over his face, "and it's not 'the cat'. This is Glados."

Steve stared. "What kind of name is Glados?"

"An insane super computer from a video game, you wouldn't know but I'll send you a copy," Tony explained breezily, stretching as luxuriously as any cat would. Steve chose to ignore the sound of his teammate's back adjusting as he did so. "Anyway, I picked her up sometime last year, well actually she snuck into the lab somehow and made it clear she wouldn't leave. She's really smart, and only partially because I made her that way. She can understand English so don't insult her."

Steve had just reached out to pet the cat when Tony mentioned her being smart. His hand stopped in mid-air. "She…can understand English?"

"Yup. And a few other languages, just the main ones, French, Spanish, Portugese, Japanese, most Chinese dialects, stuff like that. Pepper wanted me to get a service dog or something just in case the arc reactor acted up or I got attacked and someone yanked it out again, something that could get help and show instructions on how to replace the reactor," Tony rambled, picking up the black cat, Glados, and putting her on the ground as he got up. "Glados came along so I made her smart enough to know what to do and understand if I gave her commands but she's a stickler for being polite. Give it a try Cap." Tony gestured toward the cat, resting his hands on his hips and looking expectantly at Steve.

Steve in turn stared at the cat. Glados turned her luminous blue eyes to look up at him, tail twitching in an expectant manner. "Uh..." What did you order a cat to do?

Tony rolled his eyes. "Glados, pull up schematics 4593 uno sterling alpha," Tony barked, tacking on a please at the end.

The diamond shaped tag on Glados' collar glowed vivid blue-white and a holographic image floated at eye level like Tony's stupidly futuristic computers that still dumbfounded Steve. The image, or images rather, were blueprints for…Steve's shield. At least, they looked like Steve's shield with mild modifications. Lists of equations, links to different models and test results hovered beside the semi-translucent images.

"She's kinda like a mini JARVIS except she doesn't talk back unless she pulls up the thought-to-text program but that's just a prototype, gets a little scrambled sometimes." Tony tapped one of the translucent images to pull up a more in-depth image of the shield for a half second before closing out the whole thing. "Forget you saw that Capsicle, at least until your birthday." A patented Tony Stark smirk followed the statement. Steve stared at his eccentric teammate.

"That cat…Glados or whatever, she can…talk?" Steve stammered, the shield plans totally forgotten.

"Yup but like I said, it doesn't work one hundred percent yet. The next version will. Cats just have odd brains. Come on, I think I hear dear Natasha getting ready to…"

"TONY STARK! STEVE ROGERS! GET UP HERE NOW BEFORE THE FOOD GETS COLD!"

Tony smirked at the ceiling. "Yes mom!" he hollered back before taking Steve by the elbow and steering him toward the lab door, Glados trotting along behind him. "Come on Cap, time to introduce the real lady of the house to the rest of the family."