Ingrid had lived in Leighton, Massachusetts her entire life. It was a small, quaint town without much to do or see, but it was home. Ingrid lived with her father, Tony Strike in a nice home in the nice part of town. Tony wasn't home much. He was often away for work for long periods of time but when he was home, life was good. She always thought she would be in Leighton her entire life, she loved her ordinary life, her ordinary school, her ordinary friends and her ordinary father. Little did Ingrid know, Tony Strike was anything but ordinary, in fact, Tony Strike wasn't even his real name! The truth was, Tony Strike was Tony Stark. Yes, the Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man and little did he know, Ingrid was't going to be fooled by his charade forever.
"Dad!" Ingrid rushed down the large wooden staircase in her house to the front door. Her long brown hair flowed behind her. She was just in the middle of brushing it when she heard the door open, signifying that her dad was home from his latest trip.
"Hey, Grid, how are you?" Tony winced in pain as he hugged his daughter. Mysterious cuts and bruises covered his body.
"Oh my god, dad! What happened?" Ingrid pulled back when she saw a huge bandage covering most of his forearm. Her father occasionally returned from his trips with something wrong but he always passed it off as "being clumsy". That may have fooled her when she was 10, but Ingrid was 17 now, soon to be 18. She knew the difference between a scraped knee from tripping on the sidewalk and a gash on is arm that looked like a knife wound.
"Oh… Um… Sushi making accident?" Tony looked sheepishly at Ingrid. He should have prepared answers to Ingrid's questions beforehand. The truth was, Tony had just gotten back from saving the world from a certain god of mischief and a shit ton of aliens.
Ingrid sighed deeply and gave her father another hug. "One day I'm going to figure you out, dad."
"I hope you never have to." Tony muttered into her shoulder.
One week later, Tony had to make an emergency run to the grocery store. They were making stew that night and they realized that they were out of salt. Ingrid noticed that in her father's haste, he left his cell phone at home. "Now maybe I can get some answers" Ingrid thought slyly. She was just about to put in his password (it was always "ingrid97") when it started to ring. The contact name said "Capcicle". She had no idea who it was but answered it anyway.
"Hello?" She asked, almost too enthusiastically. She thought that this person might be able to shed some life on what was going on in her father's life.
"Umm… This is Steve Rogers… Is this someone answering Tony's phone for him or do I have the wrong number?"
"No! This is Tony's phone. I'm Ingrid, his daughter. Should I take a message for him?"
"Excuse me? Daughter? Steve, you must have called the wrong Tony!" Another voice belonging to a woman echoed across the line.
"This is Tony Strike's phone. Your name in his contacts was "Capcicle". I don't know if that helps at all." Ingrid scrunched up her nose like she always did when she was confused.
"Well that's what he calls me… Umm, Natasha what's going on and what does she mean by Strike?" That last sentence sounded like it had tried to be muffled by a hand on the speaker but the sound still went through. Her father had kept her a secret from his friends, but why?
After a few moments of silence, a third voice came through the phone, "Hi, Ingrid is it? I'm Bruce Banner," A silent alarm went off in her head. Ingrid loved science and Bruce's paper on the properties of all the different kinds of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum was one of her favourites. "We all work with your father and out of all our years of knowing him, he never mentioned he had a daughter and his name isn't Tony Strike, it's Tony Stark."
Ingrid stumbled back and into the granite countertops in her kitchen. Thousands of thoughts were racing through her head. Had everything she thought she knew about her father been a lie? If the people on the phone were telling the truth, that meant her name wasn't actually Ingrid Strike, it was Ingrid Stark.
"Ingrid are you still there?" Bruce spoke with concern in his soft voice. She heard more people in the background on the other end of the phone. a lot of astonished gasps and whispers made their way to her ears.
"Ingrid?" Tony Stark was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, grocery bags in hand. He looked terrified when he saw her with his phone in her hand. "Who are you talking to?"
Ingrid had tears in her eyes and stared at him with a disgusted look on her face. "Here. It's for you." She said as she pushed the phone into his hands and stormed up the stairs.