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₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Two Weeks Later,
September 7th, 2020

Veck was sent a text message to come to Stark Tower II, enter the first floor, get in the elevator and press the floors in a three part sequence. First 9-10-2-0. He was then asked his birthday, his social security number, and twice if he was sober – once, then it asked him if he was sure. Then he was taken down, down, down into another chamber. There he was full-body scanned like something out of a video game, lights snapped against his eyes. Then the elevator opened.

Petre was standing in a white hall. She was dressed in dirty jeans and a belt pulled as tight as it would go, the long end of it left sticking out from beneath a loose t-shirt that showed Jesus riding on a bomb, smiling and giving a thumbs-up. Huge goggles sat on her face, covering her cheekbones to above her eyebrows and the movement of blue beneath the black lenses kept going even as she pulled them off. “Miss me?” She smirked roughly. “Welcome to the Stark underground, this bunker can withstand a nuclear attack, among other things.” She rubbed one of her eyes, her hands were covered with small cuts and a few of her fingers darker from bruises showing through even her naturally colored skin.

The girl coughed once and pushed her shoulders back, “Papa and I are having a bit of… uh,” She searched for the right word. “A little intellectual schism, no, we… we’re fighting.” That was why she had come out to meet him. Petre’s birthday was in three days, she would be 21, old enough to drink not that she would. That wasn’t what the two of them were fighting about. She looked towards Veck, trying not to think of how handsome he was. How she liked the way his chest looked and the shape of his jaw, the odd color of his eyes, his direct way of being. Don’t. Pete begged her girlish thoughts to stay away but they padded hard in her chest, demanding to be dealt with. Demanding equality with the rest of her being.

She looked away sharply, “I made an armor for you Veck and it’s incredible and I did it…” Her hands curled into fists, a twitch ran up her cybernetic arm. “Even though I was told you aren’t allowed to have Iron Man technology… we’re fighting over who has rights to what, I suppose, and its not going anywhere… I built you the armor, there’s a lot I need to explain to you but I’ve also programmed the suit with three levels of artificial intelligence. It will help you do everything, teach you, and answer questions, help you plot courses, give you opinions even… you’ll find piloting the suit won’t be a problem because of these systems but the problems are outside the suit.” Pete felt nervous. Generally, she never felt nervous. It was an awful thing, a pumping, cold, unsettling power in the core of her being. It physically hurt. It made her mind fumble around the older boy. Stupid and slow. Maybe Papa is right, maybe I’m being driven to make the wrong decisions… It was obvious that Pete was upset, frantic almost, though it was no secret that she had never stood up to her father or gone against his wishes and, if that was what she was doing, it was difficult and straining every part of her and, really, something she didn’t seem capable of doing. Her reasons had to be… strong. She hated her father for seeing all the secrets she wanted to hide, the personal things no young girl wanted to wear on her sleeve. Maybe I did make him an armor because I have feelings for him, maybe you're right about everything, Papa, but this whole thing has brought out an ugly side... one I never thought would come at me, how can you patent cold fusion power right out from under me? It was my discovery. And then you tell me I'm not allowed to use Iron Man technology, technology you invented, on things I want but now you're using my discovery and you claimed it as your own... because of public opinions? Because you have a thousand reasons for doing it but you still did it... since when has anything between us been about whose name is on the paper? I guess it has always been your name. Always. Her mind raced, sad and confused, and then throw the boy she fancied into the mix and things had really become ugly.

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Petre’s face burned when he touched her, she felt cold in his hold dispite a great flush of feeling. There was no better rush than being pulled close by the boy she had been thinking about for two entire weeks, a small daydream coming to life, busting with the reality she tried so hard to focus on. When she looked up at him there was liquid sliding along the rims of her eyes. Her long dark eyelashes had always been so full, the kind of thing girls clumped mascara on to get, but for Pete it was just that way. “You know how I’ve been obsessed with parallel dimensions since I was a child? Papa would get so frustrated with me… I was right, Veck.” She dragged a few fingers around his wrist and down the back of his hand, a light touch. “I found a way to harness that infinite energy almost a year ago, Papa said we had to keep it quiet. So we did. He told me not to even paten it to be safe, so I didn’t. He jumped into my project so we could condense it into a source of power for Iron Man technology, we did that, about three months ago. I ran all the tests and everything ran perfectly in the simulator, I build a few small test droids, they worked right. Better. Papa told me the cold fusion power was too powerful to go public but I want it to go public, the whole beauty of it was being a nondestructive renewable energy without any waste material, the Power of the future, the Power to change the world. I didn’t think of it as a weapon but now it is a weapon. If we figured out how to use it, other people can. That’s what Papa believes and now, as Iron Man technology, I’ll never get to see cold fusion be what it was suppose to be, its going to be another secret in Iron Man’s hands like extremis or any number of amazing things Papa made to stay ten minutes ahead of the rest of the world. So we decided we were going to go underground to start plugging cold fusion power into the most guarded of our families technology,” She looked at Veck, something crushed beneath the blue of her eyes. “The stuff that never sees the light of day, the stuff that… if it leaked, it could tear the world apart. That stuff. We’ve been plugging Iron Man up, updating everything, re-working the very veins of Iron Man to carry new blood. We didn’t talk about what we would do first, it was always assumed Iron Man would be re-build, then Rescue, then War Machine. I told him I was going to build another armor, Papa thought I was doing it for him and… then he realized I was building it for you. After all this. Something I’ve been scribbling equations for on coloring books, something I’ve come back to again-and-again… my masterpiece, cold fusion was my Iron Man and-and-” Pete couldn’t say it. Her father had stolen it, made it something she hadn’t wanted, and now denied her one piece of control over it and she was broken by it. “He actually told me I wasn’t allowed to make anything for you or hand over any cold fusion technology to anyone outside of those of his direct approval… which is James Rhodes, Pepper Potts, and himself. Then… we started fighting, I quit, I threw everything down and was leaving. I was going to paten cold fusion and,” Her shoulders started to shake. “… he’d patented it over a year ago, in the first week after I’d told him. I don’t own any of it. My name isn’t on it.” A few tears dribbled down her cheek. “You know,” Pete forced a crooked grin. “I wouldn’t even care, this had never mattered to me, he could have his name on everything but now I understand. I see why its nice to be the boss. Well,” She coughed a few more times, it sounded like there was something down in her lungs. “I made the armor anyway. It came down to butting heads. I said things. He said more. I don’t know… if I’m a bad guy or not, Veck.” Clearly, her father had really spent the past two weeks pounding her over making the armor. He was behind the door, in their bunker playground and behind that door was also this armor she kept speaking of, as well as the new Iron Man armor that they were still working on. “You want to see what little thing that’s mine I was able to take away from my life’s work?” Her voice had become flat, depressed, distant. Tony had betrayed her. It was easy to see. She was shaken inside. He had made sure to kill whatever enjoyment she had in making the armor for the boy she loved but she had done it anyway, in true Stark stubbornness. As Tony had continued on with his, in true Stark stubbornness. The two had been side-by-side for two weeks, working on two different armors, with the same new power behind them, bitterly angry at each other. Cold Fusion indeed, Pete thought bitterly.

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Petre put her hand on the door, “I hate myself most days, Veck.” She said matter-of-factly and her small fingers started to slowly press the sequence to open the door. It was a true statement, one said without a great sound of emotion. It came out flat and simple, it could have been a fact or another equation.

The doors opened to a huge lab. It was in a state of chaos from the two Starks working nonstop down here, wires and parts were strewn about and every wastebasket was full of papers and banana skins or apple cores, or peanut butter protein bar wrappers. The place was some mixture between a tortured chamber and a mad scientists lab, with a dash of everything that was the unique mark of the Stark family. A few robots wheeled around, they didn’t seem to be doing anything productive. Tony was down another level in the grate floors, a blowtorch in hand and a welder’s mask over his face though his arms were bare in a gray wifebeater, his face covered with stubble that had began to blur out his usual manicured facial hair. When they entered he shut off the blowtorch and flipped the mask up.

“Petre.” He called her over. His voice an order, she left Veck’s side and went to stand at the edge to see down among the wire and open torso of a new Iron Man armor. “This is your last chance.”

She scowled, “Stop it!” Her foot stamped the floor with a clang. Tony snapped the mask back down and light-up the blow torch with a roar and went back to what he was doing.

Veck could already see the finished armor. It was to the far left in the only space down here that wasn’t piled up with crap, it stood on its own. An armor that was in an Iron Man fashion but the design of it was a strange mixture of extremely sharp angles and then organic curves. On the back two black two inch circles stuck out like sawed off ends of an exhaust pipe on a performance car. It was primarily black in color with large areas of navy blue. The top of the armors hands and feet were outlined in white and then colored yellow and orange, this also ran down the spine of the suit and broke off between the shoulders in a “Y” shape, the ends coloring around the two short cylinders yellow and orange. ((Feel free to also describe as you want)) Pete noticed he was looking that way and gave a slow nod to him, “Cold Fusion, you’re the only one who can pilot it. It’s made entirely for you but I’ll show you what he looks like turned on.” She jogged over to a countertop and touched it, it came alive with a keyboard. The girl typed a few commands. The armor came alive like it was possessed. Through the small knobs on the shoulders two foot long beams of blue light jutted out like broken dysfunctional wings, like a blue flame on a blowtorch. Light ran through the entire armor, filling it in as if it were shelled in tendrils of blue LED lights and the customary circle on the chest pulsed twice and then stayed a solid dark blue with a lighter center. “The light is cold fusion power running through the armor, your repulsors on the boots don’t give off heat, none of it does, and they, well here,” She typed another command and they kicked in, lifting the armor a foot off the around. Instead of blowing violently downward like Iron Man’s armors always had, the boots only glowed gently at the feet as if smoldering with a blue icy substance. Petre watched with a small grin, clearly she thought very highly of this armor, she tapped the key again and it shut off, lowering gently back to the floor but the rest stayed glowing, the eyes of the armor also glowed and seemed to tendril upward at the ends like some haunted creature.

She came around from the counter coming out from a metal wall in a boomerang shape, everything down here was modern and edgy. Pete moved over to the armor and stepped on its boots, then stood on the tips of her toes and, even then, was just able to reach up and put her hand through one of the torch-like shards humming from the back. She looked back at Veck, grinning. “It won’t accidentally hurt anyone because its not giving off heat or cold, its doesn’t feel like anything temperature wise, you can feel the pressure of the air, just like you can feel wind on your cheek but it-” Pete stopped talking when Tony came up the stairs from the lower level, casting aside his welder mask. His bare arms covered with tough muscle. Stark was not a weak man, in intellect or strength. Captain America himself had trained him and he had supplemented that with his own training and experience. He took his physical condition as seriously as his mental one, all things that needed to be kept healthy. He pulled a dirty cloth from the rail it was slung over and rubbed his hands in it as he slowly approached them, indifferent.

“Congratulations, Veck, you’ve received the most expensive and dangerous present a woman as ever given in a very sad attempt to show her love. You know, Pete, Brittany Spears would just buy him a diamond covered watch.”

Her cheeks blushed through her olive skin, “You won’t let me become the next Iron Man, Papa, and the day will come when you can’t pilot that armor. Then what? We just let it all die?”

“Yes.” Tony said harshly. “That is exactly what we do, Petre. I’ve unleashed a terrible thing onto the world and I’ve done everything to keep my armors hidden, you can’t just throw it away when it breaks or becomes obsolete. This is a problem that continues to compound itself.”

“You compound it, I didn’t want this-” Pete went over to him. The two were clearly going to engage in another huge argument and Tony had managed to ruin her moment of giving Veck the armor but the two were clearly locked in moral combat, their was something about all of this Tony could not give up his control over. He looked as strained as Pete did, only he seemed to be winning, the girl wasn’t able to withstand him. She never had been able to. Since she was a little child one look could turn her entire world.

“Yes, this is the curse of Iron Man Petre, do you have any idea how much I’ve sacrificed to keep ahead? Welcome to my world you wanted to be part of what I do, this is part of that! How does it feel to create something wonderful and have to hand it over to Iron Man?” Tony’s voice went up, he bore down on her. She shed tears but no sound, just watched him. Still loyal. Still respectful.



........................................................................................... ↕𝕽Θ₦₥a∩

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Petre blushed furiously when Veck stepped foreword, engaged Tony, and put his arms around her. It was one of those worst case scenarios coming to life and the exact thing she knew would drive this entire thing out of the park. “Veck.” She said gently.

Tony tossed the rag onto the floor with a slap, “That’s it,” There had always been a sore spot within him when it came to his child. He had been extremely protective of her, he had been extreme everything with Petre and his Iron Man armors and his businesses. His successes and his failures. This punk is not going to get my daughter. “You have always been ridiculously outspoken, Veck and you’re not even eloquent about it. You’re brash and come off like an undereducated brute. I’ve shaped my entire life around making sure the people I care about are safe and the world is safe from myself. I’ve looked in the mirror and seen different men, many of them men I didn’t like and I’ve corrected it. Someday you’re going to have to do the same thing because you’re not your father,” Tony snatched Pete’s wrist and pulled her away from Veck. “And don’t touch her.” The defensive father reared up.

“Papa-”

“What are you thinking, Petre, really? He resents and hates our family, what do you think the outcome is going to be? What have people said about you since you were a four day old infant--- oh, she’s just like her father. If Veck doesn’t like me, he sure as hell doesn’t like you. You’re not compatible. This is a terrible idea! I understand you feel some connection to him because of your shared history but that doesn’t mean you love him or that he loves you, it’s just emotions getting the best of you. I’ve made terrible mistakes chasing after beautiful women because I felt deeply for them, dear god, Pete, if you can’t take my insight on bad romances who can you?”

She started to shake her head, “I never said Veck loved me.”

“No. You didn’t. But you want him too,” Tony said with straightforward words that caused his child to look away from him. “He’s living in the other tower’s penthouse, probably driving one of your cars. I know you love him and he’s not as naïve as you are, darlin’,” Tony narrowed his eyes at Veck. “He knows it, too, and I wouldn’t put it past him to use it for everything its worth. Just like now. He’d love to see you turn on me, to pick him over your father. It’s not gonna happen, Rodgers.” Tony’s jaw was tight. He seized up Captain America’s son, the glowing armor at the boy’s back illuminated like a monster. This is the future of Iron Man? This is what I’ve put in motion by not letting Petre fight with me? Now I have to see my entire line pass to this meathead?

Tony shifted his stance, widening it. “Let me explain something to you, Veck. You don’t understand the complexity of what Petre discovered and what, together, we were able to do with it in a short time. She’ll get her credit when we go public with a revised version of cold fusion power that won’t be able to be made into or power any weapons. There is a huge risk in this new power source. I wanted to shut the project down two years ago and now here we are,” He spread his hands. “How would you feel about me if I allowed Iron Man technology to go to every bimbo who wants to climb in a suit? If all those women I screwed for a week and gave nothing but sex, as you pointed out, I gave an armor too? Well, every Justin Hammer, Norman Osborne, Stane, and nutjob that can afford it would have an armor. Even those who can’t have ways to get things they shouldn’t, they could have weapons powered by rogue Iron Man technology. Just like how you and Pete were nearly killed, how Pepper was nearly killed—and hundreds of innocent people did die because Iron Man technology leaked. Pete doesn’t know what she’s doing, she’s not thinking clearly because she’s in a cloud of female daydreams. There are no exceptions in my world, Veck. That is how this family works. We have to protect our technology when it has the power to hurt other people.”

Pete stepped foreword, nearly in years. “But I believe in all of that, Papa, please this is different, this is an exception just like Pepper was!”

“Pepper was not an exception, Petre, god dammit if I hadn’t made that armor to take care of her-”

“Rhodes?”

Tony’s mouth tightened, “It’s not the same.”

“It is, Veck is-is my Pepper Potts and my James Rhodes!” Pete’s voice spiked up. Her heart was thundering in her chest from the panic she felt at having to engage with her father in any arguments and, even worse, that Veck was also part of it. “Don’t I need a bodyguard, too? Don’t I need someone I can trust?”

“You have me,” Tony pressed a hand on his chest. “Darlin’ I didn’t have anyone else… we’re so lucky to be so alike, to be a family. You don’t need him!” Some anger curled in Tony’s voice and he forced a hand out at Veck. Him. The alien. The parasite now infecting their perfect world. The thing Pete dragged off the streets, soaked and sick, and asked to keep. Only now he couldn’t tell her to throw it back where she got it because she was almost 21. He didn’t know how to deal with these things. He never thought of the day when Petre was a grown woman and fell in love, or married, or if she would someday have children. Tony had not gone that far. He’d always pictured her with him, that eight year old with a smile full of baby teeth.



........................................................................................... ↕𝕽Θ₦₥a∩

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

“You paint me up like a dictator, Veck, like my daughter is a slave chained to my ankle! Pete does have her own voice, I love my child more than anything! I fell in love with her the moment I held her, my life changed. I know what’s best for her, I’ve always known! You are not what is best for her! How dare you tell a father that his daughter isn’t his little girl, what would you know about having a child and raising that child by yourself? She’s closer to me than Iron Man!” This couldn’t possible get any worse could it, Anthony? Oh, well, she could be pregnant… Tony shifted uncomfortably, seeing Veck causing himself to bleed wasn’t upping his comfort level and hearing the younger man hated him didn’t help either. God is this what this is about? Who has control of Pete, me… He stared at Veck. Or him? He felt an anger in his core. He didn’t want Petre to trust anyone more than him, to value anyone’s opinion more than his. Tony had not prepared himself for the day he stopped being number one and really he didn’t believe it could happen… but he saw the signs now. “So be it then, if you’re destined to have that armor then I shouldn’t stand in the way. She had every right to make an armor for the person she trusts,” There was a pause. The real deal was yet to come. “But,” He looked at his daughter. “I don’t want you involved with him beyond work,” Tony slide his hand through the air, forming an invisible line between Pete and Veck. “He’s unstable, has a terrible temper, and look at what he’s doing to his hands!” But you will need someone, someday to take care of her… your only child, that one thing immortal that can change the world without hurting it… my most precious creation… Tony thought tenderly even as he stared down at her with angry eyes, trying to keep the tension, hoping he could use it to get her to stay away from Veck, at least, romantically. Maybe someday Veck will be the right one but he’s sure as hell not that person today.

Pete did look, her eyebrows tensed in the same way her fathers were. “He has a destructive habit when he’s under stress? Look at me,” She gestured to her underweight body. “I don’t like food and you’re an alcoholic.”

“Recovering alcoholic, thank you.” Tony snipped.

“Recovering,” Pete corrected. “Sorry… and I’m going to be twenty-one in a few days, Papa, you can’t tell me I’m not allowed to date. You just can’t. You don’t get to pick… this isn’t India.”

“Really?” Tony asked with a smirk. He bent down, leaning closer to her. “You can’t date.” He said slowly. “You’re not ready for boyfriend. You’re not even ready for a puppy.”

Pete turned away from him and walked back, towards Veck.

“Pete!” Tony called after her. The finite tone of an order that had to be obeyed…

But wasn’t.

Pete took one of Veck’s hands and opened it, pressing his bleeding palm against her heart. “The other reason I made the armor for you,” She looked up at him carefully. “Was to say I’m sorry for the part my family played in taking yours away.” Pete had practiced saying this to him in front of the mirror, in her head, over-and-over. How she would look at him when she said it, how she would force herself to keep eye contact instead of slumping away. “The one thing your father told me that I’ve never forgotten, he knelt down and said, ‘You have to lead by example. Everyone has to lead by example. Only by doing this will you have the peace of knowing you did right onto yourself and those around you.’” Pete trembled still. “When I was a child I didn’t know how to even sort out what I felt, I know now I wanted to give you back what you’d lost. I know I can’t do that but…” She exhaled. “I can still give you a lot, Veck.”

“Pete, you don’t owe him anything! Darlin’… no, don’t be that way…” Tony trailed. God damn it, Steve, you’re talking through my own kid aren’t you? And… it’s working… he reached up and rubbed the back of his head uneasily. “Neither of you know what you’re getting into… you both have way too much on your plates, even you Veck you’ll be in the same position I’ve been since she was born. You screw up once, just once and…” Tony looked at her cybernetic arm, even as gracefully constructed as it was he thought it was an eyesore on the body of his pretty child. A mark of the one time he stopped watching, when he had shrugged and thought everything would just be fine. “And the truth is between my extremis armor and the super soldier qualities you inherited from your father, the two of us probably will be around long after she’s gone.” And that hurt him terribly as well.

“Papa…” Pete trailed unhappily. “None of this matters right now. Veck is staying, he’s going to have the armor, and you’re going to be seeing a lot more of him… no matter what he and I become. He’ll always need us to keep the armor repaired and upgraded.” She watched Tony start to turn away, she didn’t want his cold shoulder but she didn’t want to reject a possible romance with Veck either. She couldn’t make everyone happy.

“I think you should move into the penthouse I set up for you, since you’re such a grown up now.” Tony said coldly. He was overwhelmed. He felt like Pete had been ripped out of his safe nest and he felt the whole entire thing was all Veck Rodgers fault.


........................................................................................... ↕𝕽Θ₦₥a∩

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Petre did have fireworks sparkle through her and her stomach seemed to flop and she almost felt nauseous from how much she felt in one moment. Just to have Veck turn her chin up and kiss her made her feel pretty and real, in a way she hadn’t before. As if some greater force had finally acknowledged she, too, was human. I guess I never really thought about what it would be like… a first kiss, she considered but stepped on both his feet to get just a bit more height enough to push onto the tips of her toes and kiss him back. It’s not scary. It’s amazing. What a rush! She was smiling before it registered, smiling in the way she hardly ever did. A real smile. A beautiful smile that pushed up her cheeks and brightened her eyes, showing through her without any hang-ups. Clear. Slot A into slot B, always the same result… always the same… she thought gently. Comforting. Like him. Her lips were small and a bit dry and she kept the same hand clutched over her heart, “You should take your armor for a… test drive. I need to make sure everything calibrates to you correctly, oh,” Pete said in the same nervous, choppy tones. “Your hands… uh, I think we have Band-Aids… I know basic first aid, oh you should be able to access the armor by voice commands. Power up. Power down… I’ll go find something for this…” She looked at his hand, quick eyes taking in what damage he had caused and how she should go about fixing it so it yielded the best results. She cared for him. It was all so obvious now and in the aftermath of putting it all out there, Pete was visibly calmer and more relaxed. He couldn’t find the usual edge that seemed to try to light him on fire at every turn. It really showed how far she pushed herself to do what Tony wanted her to do and be what he wanted her to be, that cold and angry little thing trying to make herself known in situations she was terrified in. All she could do was get vicious. Make people see she was even colder than Tony Stark. That she would go farther. Stark 2.0 Perhaps that was her own intelligence coming into play, knowing if people saw her as being like her father it would be better than if they saw through her, to the stuff beneath she didn’t want them to call her out on. “Wait, just one more-” Pete came back and pushed up to kiss him again. I need to do all this but all I want to do is kiss him… And for the first time Veck could remember, Pete felt warm.

Tony had gone back to the second level to keep working on Iron Man. Pete stared at the space he had been and was still. The unhealthy dependant relationship she had with her father was, exactly that, unhealthy. He didn’t want her to leave. He didn’t want her to be independent. He couldn’t trust she’d be okay with someone else, even the son of Captain America, even the son of Captain America in an Iron Man armor. Though standing there Pete wasn't upset, nothing could touch the feeling of being accepted by Veck and being kissed... and experiencing new human things that were alive and real.

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Pete came back with a first aid box and watched the open armor ready to take in its owner for the first time, the inside was deliciously padded and she knew that he had never seen inside an Iron Man armor before. It was a weird mesh of HUD technology, a strange grid-like internal wiring that acted like a net and over that hundreds of small pads to make it very comfortable and other pressure reducing areas around joints and high-impact points. She also had what looked like a wetsuit draped over her arm and handed it to him. “You don’t have to wear that but I highly recommend it,” She said in a nerdy way, all she needed was a pair of glasses to push up her nose to complete the picture. “Normal clothes get in the way, this streamlines you. It also is a second-skin technology so the suit will be able to read and respond to your body easier. It will be the same as being naked only you’ll have the comfort of not actually being naked and it also absorbs sweat and helps regulate your body temperature, yada-yada,” Pete paused. “It’s nice. You should wear it. It’s an Iron Man accessory, makes you and the armor better. It will heighten your response time significantly and keep you comfortable.”

She motioned to an area that was screened off, “You can change back there or the bathroom it’s uh… hard to see over all the crap,” Pete tried to motion towards the far back. “It’s somewhere back there if you follow the wall…” She set the first aid box down and fumbled it open while producing a peanut butter protein bar from her pocket, the same wrappers that Veck had seen all over the lab down here. It had to be the only thing she ate because if she was eating that many of them just as a snack, even she’d be fat by now. “I think once you get in the armor the system should take care of you, its pretty self explanatory though there will be an obvious learning curb. Papa has to be a living computer to pilot Extremis, luckily you have almost seven independent systems in that armor all linking into your mainframe A.I., who still needs a name. I.S.M.N.C.F.P.A.1, independent system mother network for Cold Fusion Power armor 1. Not a very flattering name, right? I’ve been calling it is, called it A1 for awhile but all I could think of was that sauce people put on steaks and…” The girl trailed, feeling silly. She made her hands busy in the first aid box.

₪ 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘 𝖔 𝖗 𝖗 ¥ 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒𝖘 ₮0 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉•.•• ••.••.•• ••.•╭♥

Pete averted her eyes at first, her instinct, even though Veck looked gorgeous. Her arm moved out, motioning to the open armor. “Climb inside, I’ll be monitoring you the entire time.” She was excited to see the readings, see if everything worked as she was sure it would, and see how well Veck and the armor she had made for him came together as a new Iron Man. This will be the first official test run of my cold fusion powered armor, she felt her chest swell with nervous and excitement and pride, years of research coming all to this one small moment.

A part of her wondered how it felt to climb inside that armor and have it come down around one, enclosing you like a second skin. Tony had come up, angry as he was, it wasn’t enough to keep an inventor from being there for the armors first run. He went to the computer and started up several pale HUD screens. “My god look at his vitals, Petre.”

The girl turned away, leaving Veck to a private moment with his armor. “Very close to-”

“His fathers,” Tony cut her off with a sharp nod. “There’s still a lot of research that needs to be done on the super soldier serum, to think, he’s almost working above the level of his father. I thought, the next generation, might not even show it but…” Tony tapped the screen. “If I didn’t know who I was looking at, I’d make an educated guess this was a first generation serum receiver.”

“He’s incredible, isn’t he?” Pete said softly.

Tony grunted, “I didn’t say that. Capt didn’t need an armor.”

“Sure he did.” The small woman returned with equal softness. The two stood side-by-side, taken by a moment of quiet with those words until Pete touched tiny fingers to her side of the keyboard that stretched now two yards between she and her father, growing like a living entity to their needs without instruction. It was there beneath her fingers before they touched, taking in commands. “IS, online. Armor online. All systems showing… above average sync so the system definitely recognizes its got the right body inside.”

“Of course it does.” Tony stayed cool. He turned, leaning against the table with crossed arms, his thick muscle tense from short sleeves. He wanted to see how Veck faired in his first movements, remembering how he had slammed himself all over multiple labs with multiple new suits. You never expect it, even me, when I created it… its always exhilarating.

(Once Veck is inside) Pete’s voice filtered in through his helmet, “How’re you feeling in there?” She interrupted IS as the A.I. was trying to inform the man of ‘the basics’. She sounded so young when he couldn't see her face but the level of sound was comfortable unlike so many headsets and frequencies.