Minnionette put me up to it… No other explanation beyond that.

Fresh Meat

"Capes!" Edna shrieked. "My God, man what is that monstrosity on your back!?"

Thor looked with alarm at the waist high woman storming towards him. He would have thought he was safe from the insane fan girls while in Tony Stark's well-guarded penthouse, but apparently not. He shot a look at Stark who was calmly fixing himself a Vodka martini, showing no alarm at the female invasion into the previously male-only room.

"Thor, meet Edna. Edna, Thor." Stark didn't even look up during the introductions. Without a pause he was back to his martini and then wandered off to a nearby table to check the news on his interactive computer.

This left Thor to the mercies of the tiny terror circling him with the fixation of a starving vulture on a freshly dead piece of road-kill. He kept turning to try to keep her in sight as she zipped around him, muttering to herself.

"Well, the boots are impressive, but the cape HAS to go! I will not have any client of mine strutting around in that kind of safety hazard… I like the color black for his britches but they are not nearly tight enough! Do you fly?" This last was spoken full volume and directed at Thor.

She looked up at him imperiously and he felt compelled to reply, if only for his own safety. For all his centuries of experience fighting, he had never successfully managed to learn how to fight a woman. His protective instincts towards the fairer sex had always held him back from giving it his all. This woman made him very nervous however, despite her diminutive stature.

"Ahem!" the woman coughed pointedly, still waiting for Thor's reply.

"Of course I fly! The wind and air are at my command!" He felt he needed to establish his control of a conversation that seemed to be centered around him but actually involved him only peripherally.

"Humph," she scoffed. "Well, if you can already fly you should know better than to involve a cape. It will have to go."

"Wait! What do you mean? I am not taking off my cape and who are you to say I should!?" Thor was a bit angry now, but didn't back away from her. He had a feeling that if he did, she would simply follow him.

She started circling him again, this time poking and pulling at his clothes. When she got to the limit of what she could actually reach from her height she dragged a chair over and worked her way up.

"You need a haircut…" she said wryly, firmly yanking on a strand of his hair.

"Ouch! For the love of Odin… Leave off, woman! What do you think you are doing?" Thor was all but shouting at this point and becoming rather alarmed. He looked over to where Stark was still calmly sipping his martini. There would obviously be no help from that quarter.

"I'm designing your new costume of course!" Edna replied, with a sniff and a casual rearrangement of her eye glasses, which had slid down her nose a bit during the course of her investigations of the god in front of her.

"New costume? I have no need of a new costume! Did Stark put you up to this?" Thor glared balefully at the other superhero who had finally looked up from his business.

"Oh, this is not necessarily my doing," Stark said with a wry smile. "Edna and I go way back, and when she heard that I was fraternizing with other…"

"Superheroes!" Edna interjected as Stark searched for the appropriate description.

"Individuals with interesting abilities," Stark continued, "she insisted on establishing herself as our official costume designer. Don't bother fighting her, it only makes things worse. You should have seen Princess America when she tried to make him strip for measurements. He physically ran away and when she finally caught him, she made his pants two sizes too small and wouldn't fix them until he apologized and even then she kept them more tight than he liked. She has a fascination with skin tight material so expect your… assets to be emphasized. She's rather of the opinion that if you've got it, flaunt it."

Thor looked down in barely concealed horror at the demon at his feet, who had now pulled a gigantic sketchpad from thin air and was glancing from him to the paper and frantically drawing something that he couldn't see. When she looked up and saw his face she casually waved a hand in the air.

"Don't worry, darling. When I'm through with you, you will be magnificent!"

"That's rather what I'm afraid of," he muttered while trying to surreptitiously sneak from the room. "Stark, I'll be in Asgard for the next several decades. If anyone needs me, I'm not available. You are on your own."

As he beat a hasty retreat from the penthouse he thought that he could hear Stark snickering under his breath.