Work Text:
People knew what “the kid” looked like, but no one knew his name. This was the result of various – well they could only really be described as – incidents around the tower. There were rumours of a purple haired version but without enough people talking about it that had not entered the generally accepted mythology around the kid.
That was expected to change when Mr Stark brought him into the lab head meeting, surely Mr Stark knows his name and would reveal it at some point, they could only hope. And before our dear readers think that lab heads were far too serious to engage in such childish gossip you must first recognise the force of nature the kid had become and the general level of maturity Tony Stark inspired in employees and then reconsider.
Mr Stark often attended this meeting as he was very interested in the R&D components of his company – the same could not be said of the PR department to the eternal annoyance of Ms Potts – but this is not relevant to our story. What is relevant is that the kid was brought to this particular meeting and ever since the “Mmm Watcha Say” incident people wanted more information on the mere teenager that could – presumably – hack FRIDAY’s systems.
Unfortunately for the many interested parties no information came to light, the kid simply sat in the room barely paying attention and followed Mr Stark out at the end. There were a serious of “looks” exchanged between the two of them throughout the meeting but without being privy to the inaudible communication methods of their boss these remained a mystery.
This pattern repeated over the course of the month, the kid attending random meetings, all accompanied by the boss and never participating. That, however, came to an end almost an exact month after the first meeting. In a meeting for the collaboration project between medicine and engineering about a surgery bot. As soon as Stark opened the floor to suggestions and ideas, the kid raised his hand.
Stark turned to the kid “You do realise this isn’t school, you can just talk if you have an idea?”
“Well that seems a bit rude doesn’t it Mr Stark.”
“Just give us your idea kid.” An inaudible groan made its way around the room when they didn’t learn the kid’s name.
“What if you included a doppler machine warning system?”
“What if? Do you want to form a more specific question there? Or maybe even explain the premise of the question, so it makes sense to someone other than you?”
“You know what, based on that snark I don’t think I do.”
True to his word the kid remained silent for the rest of the meeting, despite a rather intense silent conversation with Tony that the kid seemed to win and many questioning glances sent his way from curious researchers. After the meeting there was no sign of the kid (unless you count Patricia from medicine who swore that she saw the kid use the photocopier during her night shift and leave via the window – but nobody did) until the engineering lab was opened up the next day.
Stuck to their white board was first several journal articles - explaining death rates due to traumatic haemorrhaging in. Then a complex blueprint of a miniaturised imaging machine that had been created with FRIDAY’s systems and dated at 3am that morning. Then a comparison of human reflexes and computer programming that had a mixture of photocopied pages from research articles and what appeared to be a page ripped from a high school biology textbook annotated with a glitter pen. Following that was a frantic diagram in whiteboard marker on A2 paper on how a doppler machine could be installed on the end of the robotic arm and a reflex programme installed to prevent anyone from accidentally cutting a blood vessel during surgery. It’s worth noting that a working reflex programme was later sent to the lab by Tony Stark’s personal email with a message that reads:
Hi my dudes,
This is definitely Mr Stark sending you this email but I cannot take credit for the work attached as it was done by my exceedingly superior protégé who claims no credit for he is far more humble (and just all round better) than me. Hope you like the programme, if you need it debugged just yell at FRIDAY.
Sent from iPhone
04.56am 10/10/2020
Suffice to say no-one believed that it was sent by Tony Stark and no-one was entirely sure what “yell at FRIDAY” meant but the programme did indeed work.
After that he was brought to a few more meetings and spoke more and more, the boss keeping his snark to a minimum (well it was a minimum of snark for Tony, so still a fair chunk above the average). In a few weeks he had solved major problems for three projects, added entirely new concepts to five and invented a new stain for the microbiology department.
After a while the kid started turning up to meetings on his own and FRIDAY always let him into the room so he was clearly approved to be there – presumably by Tony. Now the company benefited from these random ideas and no-one was really that bothered when he walked in, until he started showing up to things that could only be loosely defined as “not lunch”, let alone project planning meetings.
The problem was that if you were booking any public room for people from multiple teams by far the easiest and quickest way to get it on FRIDAY’s systems was to have it as a project meeting. This wasn’t a problem before now, random projects would be created for the purposes of these meetings and forgotten afterwards. After a while interns started giving their projects outlandish names, like “Stark Jupiter Exploration” or “The Exact Geometrical Formula of America’s Ass”, it became an in-joke among the junior members of the tower. However, despite the kid’s title he wasn’t a junior member of the tower and didn’t know this. Leading to our problem…
“Planning Meeting: Making Quinjets Suitable for Extra-Terrestrial Flight” which was actually the engineering student’s quarterly pot-luck – unfortunately FRIDAY didn’t know that and therefor neither did the kid.
“You guys brought food? You’re the best!” Exclaimed the kid as he walked through the doors to conference room 23b5.8 “So where are you at in the planning process? I am so excited by this project!”
Before anyone could explain what was happening Jeff cut in “Oh we were just planning to bounce round ideas with some food, feel free to start.” Catching on quickly people began shushing the people next to them, rumours had flown around the kid and his meeting hijacks and it was agreed that you did NOT stop him, no matter how ridiculous his idea, no matter how extreme his tangent you did not halt the thought process. Sure, his idea might not even come under your department’s purview but somehow they were always, always, useful.
It started off reasonably tame, just the kid bouncing ideas off his own brain, then he found a whiteboard marker and started writing. Then he started talking to FRIDAY and pulling up specs for the US Space Shuttle. Once he had three different coloured markers and at least six display screens up around the room the interns could understand perhaps every 5th word out of his mouth, but perhaps that didn’t really matter. By the end of the 45 minutes the room had been booked for there were two conclusions: a unanimous agreement that Angie’s vegetarian chilli was the best dish in the room and a fully working blueprint for a Quinjet - that could survive a vacuum and temperature fluctuations a 100°C beyond those the ISS could survive.
Ever since then the Kid has entered meetings at any level freely. There are many other notable incidents, such as when he gate-crashed the board of directors meeting, the janitorial staff’s union meeting or the annual intern karaoke night, but this incident earned the Kid his capitalisation. It is also unanimously believed to be the reason SI entered the commercial space market.