[Tony sits down, facing Raine and Gene, and pulls some random half-finished gadget into his lap to fiddle with. He nods at Gene's description of the rings, silently thanking Raine for the distracting conversation topic.]

Yeah. And they're hundreds or thousands of years more advanced than current human technology. It's hard to guess how much more advanced, really - me and my dad couldn't make heads or tails of them. When they're all together, they can manipulate matter and energy, and even spacetime itself.

[Theoretically, they give their bearer ultimate cosmic power. In practice, their bearer has mostly used them to fuck with Tony.]