NOTES: Part 2 of my Avengers Academy fics. Stories will focus mainly on friendships but Tony is the main character. He will probably flirt with everyone (as per game mechanics) but I do intend to have it end in frostiron in the long run. Working on the third installment of this series currently, afterwards updates for this series will be put on hold depending on my muse. Enjoy!
CLUB A
Life at the Academy continued on pretty much the same. Since it was just Jan and Tony they didn't have an extensive class schedule to attend. Staff members were still being vetted and both superheroes could tell that they were the ginea pigs for the Avengers Project.
Most of their time was spent working on their individual projects, hanging out, or just walking around campus and taking photos. Jan seemed to want to document everything – and really, more pictures of her and Tony together were a must.
It was just after their Thursday afternoon class with Dr. Pym that Jan brought up a vital missing piece of their school life.
"We need somewhere we can relax around here," she commented as she took a picture of a bird.
"I told you I was working on the hot tub. Who knew it would take this long to construct," pouted Tony as he tinkered with some tech. It looked to be a highly advanced robot rubik cube.
"Well that's mainly for your use. I'm talking about something that would be enjoyed by the student body at any time without having to go to your home. A place to unwind and have fun; a place to party!" Janet exclaimed as she threw her hands into the air.
"Okay, that does sound like more fun. What did you have in mind?"
"We need to dance and drink and party so obviously a club. We can call it Club A after 'Avengers'."
Tony was already typing away on his phone, relaying messages to both JARVIS and his construction crew.
"Besides, it's pretty dead around here. The club is sure to get other superheroes' attention and we'll have a real student body soon. Not that I don't love spending time with you, Tony," added Jan as her and Tony stopped to rest on a bench.
"I get it, Jan. Classes are getting pretty boring too. Why don't we go back to your place and we can start designing the layout. I got JARVIS already creating the blueprints for our robot bartender."
Jan let out a delighted giggle. "This is going to be awesome!"
"What was that?" cut in Pepper as she sidled up to the two students. Although she was around their age she always seemed more adult than the two of them. Might be all that responsibility-nonsense she liked to partake in.
"Um…" trailed off Tony. He knew it was usually better to ask for forgiveness than permission. He also knew that technically he shouldn't just go building things in an area that wasn't his property, but he couldn't really see Fury allowing them to have a club either.
"We're building a dance club slash bar. Non-alcoholic bar," Jan quickly added when Pepper's eyebrows furrowed. "It'll give the students, once we get more to join, something fun and legal to do. This way most will consider staying on campus instead of wandering into the city all the time."
Pepper wasn't really sure what to think. She knew that if she hadn't stumbled onto their conversation by accident she would have woken up to the sound of a construction crew in the morning.
"I can't really allow the construction of anything to occur without getting permission from Fury first."
"Aww, come on Pep!" whined Tony.
"Nope," she said as she took out her phone (Tony was delighted to note she had changed it to the new StarkPhone he gave her as a gift) and started typing away.
Janet just stayed quiet and didn't seem upset at all. She started skimming through websites quickly on her phone, marking ideas of what would and would not work for a club on school property.
Pepper's eyes suddenly lit up in surprise and pleasure. "So, Fury said it was okay as long as you pay for it."
Tony let out a shark-like grin but quickly covered it up with a genuine smile. As long as he covered the cost Fury would let him build things for the school? Ideas just started pouring in.
Jan just clapped her hands in excitement. "Victory pic!" she shouted as she stood up and dragged Tony over to where Pepper was standing. She shoved them all together in order to get a selfie picture. "I knew we could get this to work," she said, no longer paying attention as she started tagging her photo and posting it everywhere.
"Did you want to help, Pepper? Or were you looking for us for something else?"
"Oh!" She had seemingly forgotten she sought them out for a reason. "Yes, I was going to tell you we're getting some new students soon. Loki Odinson will be joining us next Sunday and Amora Incantare will arrive a few weeks after that. We're planning to introduce new heroes slowly so they can adapt and not be overwhelmed or underwhelmed."
"New students? Yay!" chirped out Janet, phone forgotten.
"I was wondering when we would start getting some new blood around here," added Tony. He wondered if he would be able to make new friends. Aside from Rhodey and Janet he didn't really have anyone. Thinking about Rhodey brought a smile to his face. He was working on getting Rhodey away from that ROTC program at his old school and started building him his own suit so he could join Tony at Avengers Academy.
So what if he was basically making his friend into a superhero just to have him close by? He missed Rhodey and he wanted him around so of course he was going to find a solution. 'Forgiveness before permission and all that,' thought Tony with a grin.
"I'll contact you both when Loki is due to arrive so you can meet him at the gates and show him around. He's not really from around here so there may be a lot of things you'll have to teach him about," trailed off Pepper, not really sure how to give voice to the whole Loki-is-an-alien issue.
"Uh, what's that supposed to mean?" asked Tony curiously. Was the guy dumb or something?
"He's an Aesir, an Asgardian…from Asgard."
"He's an alien!?" squealed out Janet, already typing into her phone. Pepper snatched it away immediately.
"This is some top-secret stuff for now, alright. Please don't post anything online until you at least meet and ask Loki if it's okay. We don't want to start any trouble with Asgard."
"So he's Odin's kid?" asked Tony hesitantly. Not that he had hacked SHIELD or anything to find out more about the Academy. Nope, it was all JARVIS.
"How do you…. Nevermind. I am not going to ask. Yes, he's Odin's younger son and no, I won't be giving out more details than that."
"You mean Odin – King Odin of Asgard? And his son, who apparently is a Prince, will be attending an Earth superhero school?" Janet asked dubiously.
It was a few years ago that Asgard made it onto Earth's radar. A small, alien force called the Chitari had started some sort of invasion. SHIELD coordinated with other world armies and started to fight back but had no intel and were not making much headway into defeating the intruders. Thankfully it seemed that the Chitari didn't have that much information on Earth either as the Chitari ended up in unpopulated area in Alaska and therefore there weren't any civilian casualties. Later a great beam of light shot out of the sky, left some celtic-like crop circle things seared into the ground and these golden warriors started fighting off the aliens. The battle was won quickly and Odin Borison, known as Odin All-Father, brokered an alliance with Fury, SHIELD, and Earth. It was a lot to take in but they couldn't really hide it from everyone. Even the general public got a condensed version of the events. Tony and Janet knew as much as they did because Stark Industries helped provide a lot of the weaponry that was used that day. It was soon after that that Fury started the Avengers Academy project.
"Prince Loki of Asgard has a pretty awesome ring to it," commented Tony. "Jan, this means we need to up our game on that club if we want to have an actual alien prince dancing in it!"
Tony's enthusiasm was catching. "Alright, we'll see you later Pepper. Got a lot of designing and planning to do," said Jan as she snatched her phone away from the red head. "And I promise this will not go online until I have Loki's express consent," she added with a smile.
"Thanks, Jan. I'll see you both tomorrow. I have a few more things I need to finish up tonight," she said as she walked away.
Tony and Janet turned to each other similataneously. "This is going to be amazing!" exclaimed Janet with a squeal. Tony just nodded as he offered his elbow and escorted Janet back to her dorm room.
"And a disco ball!"
"Seriously?"
"Of course. Also we'll need a way to play music. I would love it if we had a DJ the whole time, but that seems excessive."
"We can have a DJ on occasion – I'm sure someone would be interested. The rest of the time we could just have JARVIS create several playlists and play them over the speakers. People can even make suggestions certain nights."
"As long as all the playlists aren't only full of AC/DC or Black Sabbath I'm sure we can go with that."
"Jan, you wound me!" playfully said Tony as he held his hands over his heart.
"I'm sure you'll survive," Jan grinned back. They had ordered dinner and were busy going over the last minute details of their club idea. Already done with the basic structural blueprints they turned their attention to other things they could make to improve the school. The ideas were so farfetched but they were having fun.
When Tony had first visited Jan's dorm room the first day he was ready to drag Jan away into Stark Tower and never let her leave. The room wasn't necessarily small, but he could offer her so much better. Janet had denied him. She was ready to have the real dorm experience and live-tweeted the entire time she was moving in and decorating. Coming back to it now it hardly looked like the room from before.
An Avengers Academy pennant was on the wall above her desk. Jan's bedding was in her standard yellow and black and she had a plush, white rug over the wooden floor. Her desk was cluttered with knickknacks and design journals and her bookcase was overflowing with all types of reading material, from science journals to recipe books. Tony could admit that the small room had its charm. He just couldn't get over the fact that she would have to share a bathroom with at least 20 other women. The floors were split up by gender and they also had a mixed gender/no-gender floor for other dorm mates. Everyone was allowed to choose what floor they decided to reside, the one for their own gender or the mixed floor.
Since Jan was the only girl currently, she had the bathroom all to herself but Tony knew he was going to start hearing some complaining once more moved in. Tony was suddenly glad he had his own home to live in. Stark Tower wasn't necessarily large, but it was one of the tallest buildings at the Academy. It needed to be since his workshop and projects took over three floors of their own.
"So seems like we're done here. I already emailed the specs to the Happy who's overlooking the construction crew and they said since we streamlined a lot of the design and since I'm taking over more of the technological aspects they can easily finish by Saturday."
Jan vibrated in her seat in joy. "This is so exciting! It'll be ready for when Prince Loki arrives. I wonder if they have dancing on Asgard?" she questioned aloud.
"I'm sure they do – every society, even aliens, have some sort of dancing ritual. That doesn't mean we can't teach him some moves," added Tony with a wink. "I wonder if he's any good."
"Well as a prince I'm sure he had to have had some sort of dancing lessons. It was practically a requirement for us and we're probably considered American Royalty."
Tony huffed out a laugh. "Sure Jan. I'm sorry, I mean, Princess Janet."
"Prince Anthony," she teased back. Tony made a disgusted face.
"Ugh, spare me, please," he said as he pretended to gag. Both just cracked up laughing.
"Are you sure you can't ask Fury to come here and take our picture for us?" whined Janet by the large red and gold ribbon.
"I'm sure he would say he has better things to do. Even if he doesn't I doubt he would come here to simply take a picture of you," said Pepper as she stood a foot or so away from Janet and Tony.
The clubs construction and technological integration was finally complete. Tony and Jan decided to hold a ribbon cutting ceremony to comemmortate their grand opening. Jan insisted that they needed large, ceremonious scissors to cut the ribbon, like they did for other buildings in the city and Tony was happy to make them. Once he realized that Jan picked out a red and gold ribbon since it was Tony's money that went into the club, he just had to paint the scissors in black and yellow stripes for his bestie. It was all her idea after all.
Tony and Jan held the scissors together as they snipped the ribbon. Pepper took photo after photo of them so she wouldn't miss a single moment. She knew that Jan would be inconsolable if she couldn't get the right picture.
"Drop the ball, J, and start the music," said Tony as he grabbed both Pepper and Janet's arms and led them to the dance floor.
A mix of pop and techno music filtered out of the surrounding speakers. Pepper's face flushed red in embarrassment, but once she noticed that Tony and Jan were just smiling happily at her she relaxed and let herself have some fun. They danced and twirled around and were generally silly. She would dance with Tony, then dance with Jan, then they would just dance together – it was wonderful.
A few songs later they retired over to the drinks bar, flushed and sweaty from their impromptu workout.
"Phew, that was fun," said Tony tiredly as he gulped down the soda his ULTRON robot prototype handed him.
"We really needed this," added Jan after she took a swig of water.
"I got to hand it to you two, you both did a great job," said Pepper as she sat on the stool at the bar.
Jan started taking more pictures of the club and of Tony and Pepper's exhausted faces along with a few selfies of her alone and with her friends.
#Besties, #IronWasp, #AvengersAcademy, #ClubA, #JARVIShasgoodtaste, #ToTheRescuePepperPotts
Yup, Club A was definitely one of Janet's better ideas.
THE END