Peter scowled. This was hell, he was sure of it.
"Oh no," Tony laughed, "that isn't even in the top ten of my Peter Parker Greatest Moments List! Top twenty? Maybe. I think the time Pete tried to put out a fire using a tank of gasoline ranks a little higher than the foam incident."
"Who makes their fire extinguisher and gas tanks look the same!" Peter cried.
Tony snorted. "Boring people. Besides, it's Dum-E's job to put out fires."
"Hence the foam incident," Pete muttered.
Tony laughed. "Yeah. Classic!"
"Tell us more!" Cindy begged.
"Noo! Come on guys!" Peter complained.
Tony snickered, getting a real kick out of embarrassing his kid. "Okay. I'll tell you about the first time he met Thor—"
"NO!" Peter cried. "No! Don't you dare!"
Peter quickly realised that even if this was hell, there was also a god, a god which came in the form of Ms Norris's throat clearing.
"Later," Tony whispered to his disciples.
Peter rolled his eyes and prayed for death.
"Okay, guys! Welcome to Parent's Day!" Ms Norris cried. A few people clapped, but not many. "Tea and coffee are available, and we will come together as a group at 12:30 so our parents can share their stories! Everyone, please get to know each other! We at Midtown are so happy to have you all here!"
Chatter quickly ensued. MJ turned to look at Peter, amused.
"What?" he asked hoping that Mr Stark hadn't said anything to her.
"Crisis," she whispered ominously, waving her fingers in front of his face mystically.
He didn't bother denying it. As a group gathered around Tony again, Peter knew that he had to accept that this was the end of him. There was no coming back from this.
"Peter? Your… guest?" Ms Norris said awkwardly, calling Peter to the front.
"Oh, I'm Peter's dad," Tony said casually.
Ms Norris hesitated for a moment. "Okay…"
Captain America had also said that he was Peter's grandfather, but obviously that wasn't true, it was just a figure of speech. But given Tony Stark's history… Well, she wasn't sure.
Tony grinned and bounded up to the front of the class.
"He's not," Peter muttered, loud enough for Ms Norris and the front row to hear.
Unfortunately, Tony heard too.
He gasped dramatically. "Do you seriously not think I'm your father? Peter, I am hurt! I thought we were past this awkward stage? Come on, kid, you called me dad this morning when I made you breakfast!"
"I was tired and confused," Peter insisted.
"Well what about yesterday when you called me IronDad while we were—"
"Nope."
"You little shit," Tony mumbled. "Whatever. Hello, Midtown High! How are we all today?"
The room rumbled excitedly. None of the other parents had had such a reaction. Peter wanted to crawl into a cave and die. Inviting Steve to Grandparents Day? Hilarious. Tony seeing it as his rightful place to come to Parents Day and making plans with May before Peter even knew about it? Hell.
"Well, I don't think there's any point in introducing myself, right?" Tony asked, looking around the room for confirmation. "Screw it, I'll do it anyway," he concluded, not waiting for anyone to respond. "You know me, Tony Stark, Iron Man, saviour of Earth, genius, billionaire – nearly trillionaire – playboy, philanthropist, Avenger, future-husband of the most beautiful and badass woman to ever exist, father of the stupidest kid on the planet – yes Peter, that's you."
"You're not my real dad!" Peter whinged.
Tony rolled his eyes. "Ugh, children, am I right?" he complained. He got a few agreeing rumbles from the audience.
"Okay! So, everyone has spoken a bit about their job, so I'll do that as well, I suppose. I am the owner and former-CEO of Stark Industries – the current CEO is Pepper Potts, the most fantastic woman in the universe, who as I may have mentioned, is my future wife – I know, how lucky am I, right?"
Peter rolled his eyes. His dad was such a dork.
"I am also the head of Research and Development with Stark Industries. My other job, which quite frankly is much cooler, involves flying around a bulletproof metal suit and saving the world."
Ms Norris pursed her lips. As much as she wanted to know about Iron Man, she had to think of the children and their learning. Learning about Stark Industries would be far more beneficial for them. She swallowed her curiosity and asked.
"How about we hear a little about Stark Industries?" she asked. "It's a bit more of a, uh, realistic future employer of these children."
"Of course!" Tony agreed. "So there are a few ways to get into SI. Our reception staff, cooks, cleaners, and admin all either have prior training or agree to have training paid by Stark Industries before they begin – there is of course an interviewing process beforehand, to make sure they're the right fit for the company and not a security risk, which is unfortunately a real possibility these days. What I'm guessing most of you nerdy kids are going for, is what we're known best for: tech, science, and development."
The whole class perked up.
"Okay, so, most of our employees began as an intern, like Peter here."
"I thought high schoolers couldn't be interns!" Flash called out.
Tony frowned, instantly recognising the kid.
"Normally our interns are college students, that is correct," Tony admitted, "though we do make exceptions in special circumstances. Peter is one such special circumstance. Ted, up the back there, he's also working as an intern in our programming department, one night a week after school. And Michelle – where's Michelle? Ah there you are – Michelle is working as an intern also at Stark Industries – largely thanks to Peter's influence, I admit."
"Hell nah, Stark, that was all me," MJ insisted snarkily.
Tony rolled his eyes. "Sometimes I'm tempted to become CEO again purely for the purpose of firing you."
MJ grinned deviously. "You girlfriend says hi, by the way."
"Ugh," Tony grumbled. "I'm ignoring you and getting back to the topic at hand. So yes, we have a few high school interns, but we prefer that you be in college when you come to work for us. The interview process is much similar to other staff, and we get you to work across the board in your first few months, before deciding on an area to specialise in working in. We support you as an intern throughout your degree – these are paid internships by the way – and once you graduate you are more than welcome to apply for permanent positions which, more often than not, we give out. Questions so far?"
"What do they intern in!" Cindy called, eyes-wide and completely jealous.
Tony took it in his stride. "Michelle works in PR and management, I think. I know she's been working in Pepper's team, and Ed's been working in our programming department."
"I'm the Junior Ethics Manager," Michelle said, sounding bored.
"But you still do work in PR and whatnot, right?" Tony asked.
"Yeah, but if you're looking for a title, that's it."
"Okay then. Michelle is the Junior Ethics Manager, and Ted is an Intern Programmer."
"Ned! His name's Ned!" Peter exclaimed.
"That's what I said!" Tony insisted.
Peter groaned. Ned was just so happy that Mr Stark knew who he was, he didn't even care that his name was being said wrong. And honestly? He was used to it by now. Tony never got it right.
"What about Peter?" Flash asked. "What's his internship? Toilet cleaning? He isn't good for much else!"
"Firstly, don't go saying that like it's a bad job to have, I respect all people who work for me," Tony said firmly, "but no, Peter is not actually an intern anymore for Stark Industries."
"Ha! So he was lying about his internship!"
"No, he did used to have one, but he's now a full-time, permanent employee. He works in R&D technically, but really he's an Avengers Tech Liaison."
"He's a what!" Abe squeaked.
"Avengers Tech Liaison," Tony said casually. "He liaises with the team and works on our tech. It's all in the title."
"What do you mean Peter works on the tech!" Casey squeaked.
"Don't?" Peter begged quietly.
Tony ignored him, as usual. "Peter develops tech for the team. I brought some to show today, actually. So recently Peter and I have been working together on a new Iron Man suit, Mark 48, it's basically a prototype but I think you all want to see it, right?"
There were resounding cheers, begging to see the suit.
"Pete?" Tony prompted.
Peter stepped forward, confused. "What do you want me to do?" he asked. The suit was all in Tony's watch, so there was nothing that he could really do or show.
"Explain it to the class," Tony instructed.
Peter sighed. "Oh. Okay, uh, so like Tony said, this is the Mark 48 Iron Man suit," Peter began.
Tony tapped at his watch a little, and slowly, the suit began to form around him. The class were in shocked silence, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.
Peter couldn't help but smile. "Yeah, pretty cool, huh? So we call this bleeding edge technology, because – as you can see – the suit is kind of bleeding over Tony. It's made entirely of vibranium-infused nanites. Vibranium is the same stuff that Captain America's shield is made out of by the way, so this suit should be as strong as Cap's shield."
"Should be?" Tony asked. "It is. Don't belittle me, kid."
Peter chuckled and turned to see his IronDad's face slowly being covered by the mask. The suit was still very much a prototype, and they were still working on how to make the bleeding edge tech move faster. At the moment, it wasn't exactly battle-ready.
"…So, uh, like the other suits, this one is also powered by arc-reactor technology, which is still in Tony's chest because he's a stubborn little shit that refuses to trust doctors."
Tony – now Iron Man – tapped the middle of his chest. "This baby's never let me down. Works better than any heart ever could."
Peter rolled his eyes, knowing it was a lie. He wished Tony would get his heart fixed – Dr Cho was more than ready and capable of doing the surgery that would get the shrapnel out of Tony's chest, and it had been scheduled to be done multiple times, but Tony kept refusing, insisting he was fine relying on the arc reactor alone. It stressed Peter, and most of the other Avengers. It especially stressed Pepper, but she was used to his antics more than the others were.
"Anyway, it's got all the mod-cons – missiles, canons, wings, shields... It's run by FRIDAY, Tony's AI. It's totally air-tight, so it can withstand spaceflight and underwater environments. Uh, what else? Oh! The repulsors! Can't forget the repulsors."
Tony flipped the helmet back. "Repulsors are the best bit, kid," Tony agreed. "Questions?" he asked the class.
Hands flew up.
"Okay," Ms Norris cut in, "just a few questions, and if we could avoid too many questions about the Avengers? Listening to the parents here today is supposed to help you figure out how to get into the careers you want."
Many hands went down.
"Right," Ms Norris mumbled.
"Well the kids can dream, can't they?" Tony asked. "Who says no one in the room is an enhanced individual? Kids are good at hiding stuff, you know."
Both Peter and Ms Norris gave him an annoyed look, though both for very different reasons.
"Don't?" Peter quietly begged again.
Tony snorted. "I think by now you know that saying that won't work on me."
"Thom?" Ms Norris asked.
"You never finished telling us about what happened when Peter met Thor for the first time!"
"Serious questions only!" Ms Norris ordered.
Tony snickered. "Let's just say it resulted in Thor screaming like a three-year-old, and Peter crying and ending up in the infirmary."
Peter groaned loudly.
"Ellie? Your question?" Ms Norris sighed. Was it so hard to ask that her students show some interest in their futures?
"Is the new StarkPhone a money grab or is it different to the last one?"
Tony looked almost offended. "Stark Industries has enough money. We don't release things we think you don't need," Tony assured her. "Do you want to see the prototype? It actually is future-employment related, because interns are able to submit ideas to our R&D team, and design and development of the phone is a huge sector of SI," Tony said, mostly for the teacher's benefit.
Ms Norris shrugged, effectively giving up. And honestly, she was curious.
"Peter, phone," Tony ordered.
"Oh my god, we're violating like, twelve NDA's right now! Pepper's going to murder us!" Peter groaned, nonetheless handing over his prototype-model StarkPhone.
"I'll handle it," Tony said vaguely. By handling it, he meant that he wasn't going to let her find out about it.
He held Peter's phone up to the class.
"This is the prototype – not yet finished. Bigger storage options, longer battery life, faster processor, new ease-of-access options for disabled individuals, better speakers, more multitasking options, and all new StarkPhones will come with my personal playlist included for free," Tony explained, treating it like a press-release.
"Ugh," Peter muttered.
"Do you have an issue with my playlist, Peter?" Tony demanded.
Peter screwed his face up. "Not your playlist specifically, just what you do once it starts playing."
Tony rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Anyway, there'll be a big press release when the phone officially drops, and we'll release all the new specs then."
"Any other questions?" Ms Norris asked. "Maybe something along the lines of how to get a job with Stark Industries or what type of work you can do? How Mr Stark got into the industry?"
"Kind of a given," Tony pointed out.
"What made you want to give up weapons tech and work on renewable energy technology?" Cindy asked. "I know you've said Afghanistan in interviews, but wouldn't that make you want to build weapons even more?"
Tony nodded. He didn't enjoy talking too deeply about the reasons. There was too much undealt-with trauma for him to go around discussing Afghanistan, a cave, and a missile with his name literally on it.
"You'd think, but no. Basically, I realised that the world was screwed and that I was one of the people ruining it, so I did something about it. Clean, renewable energy just seemed like something that the world needed – people had already begun working toward it, but they were going about it totally wrong so I spent a couple of nights reading up on it, made my prototypes and here we are. Within five years we hope to have all of New York on our clean-energy grid, and within ten years we're hoping the whole of the United States."
"And the world?" MJ asked bluntly.
Tony smirked. "When the world leaders finally stop taking payouts from unclean energy companies."
MJ smirked as well, and went back to sketching in her notebook.
"Will you ever go back to making weapons, officially?" Flash asked. "Cuz man, you made some badass stuff!"
Tony pursed his lips for a moment, watching as a few of the parents give the kid an annoyed look.
"Stark Industries will never make another weapon, so long as I have any control over the company," Tony swore.
"But don't you make stuff for the Avengers anyway?" Abe asked bluntly.
Tony swallowed, but refused to show any sign of emotion. He kept his face blank, like he would with any reporter.
"I make personalised weapons for people who keep the planet safe; people that I trust, who keep the planet safe. Neither myself, nor Stark Industries, make any money or profit of any kind out of those devices, and they are funded through the Avengers Initiative, which yes, I do technically personally fund. However, the Avengers Initiative is completely separate of Stark Industries."
"But isn't Peter an intern with your company, but liaising with the Avengers? You said so yourself," Cindy reminded him.
"Stark Industries holds a contract to make communications devices for the Avengers," Tony replied smoothly. Really, it was Peter's job to do whatever the hell he wanted, across both boards, but that could hardly be put on paper.
"So he liaises communications technology? Lame," Flash said.
"Better than anything you've ever done," Ned muttered.
"You wanna go, Ned?" Flash snapped.
"Hey! None of that right now!" Ms Norris ordered.
Tony frowned, looking between Ned and Flash for a moment. He decided to drop it for now, but had a few things in mind that he wanted to say to that Flash kid later.
"It's still lame," Flash said.
Tony's cold gaze fixed onto Flash Thompson. "Oh yeah? And what's the closest you've ever been to an Avenger? You ever met one? I'd love to tell you more about what Peter does, but most of it is wrapped up in an airtight NDA," he said firmly.
"I met Spiderman!" Flash said proudly.
Tony laughed. "Spiderman? Cute. He isn't even a real Avenger yet."
"But he works with you!" Flash cried, growing angrier by the minute. Tony Stark or not, how dare someone embarrass him like this!
Tony shrugged casually. "Only sometimes. He's still a kid, we'll let him join the Avengers and work on real missions when he's a bit older."
"If Spiderman isn't a real Avenger than I want you to tell him that he needs to pay for stealing and wrecking my car!"
Tony paused for a minute, processing that comment. Slowly, somewhat shocked and confused, he turned to look at Peter.
"Please tell me Spiderman didn't commit grand theft auto?"
"Spiderman committed grand theft auto," Peter confirmed, terrified that there was a punishment coming. If he lied, it was only going to be worse. "In an Audi R8," he added before he could stop himself.
Tony drew in a breath of horror.
"It's not my fault that Spiderman can't drive!" Peter cried quickly. "Besides he was very young when this happened and it was the night of homecoming and this should definitely in no way stop you from teaching him how to drive. He did just pass his driver's test after all," Peter said hopefully.
Tony gave him a look of disapproval. "You tell Spiderman that he isn't learning to drive in any of my cars if he's going to disrespect a beautiful car like an R8. Oh, and he will be doing some sort of punishment to pay for stealing and crashing a car."
Peter groaned, like a kid that was told he can't have any ice-cream. "But Tonyyy!"
"Nope!" Tony cried. "Don't even try it, kid."
Peter slumped, sulking silently.
"…Wait, Spiderman only just got his license?" Charles asked.
"He's a slow learner," Tony said quickly. "Anyway, moving on. Are there any other questions? Questions that don't involve Spiderman?"
There was a confused silence as everyone desperately tried to come up with a question.
"Can we ask about Peter?" Casey asked hesitantly.
Tony looked to Peter for a moment. "Well, technically I guess I didn't specify not to ask about him," Tony mused. Secret identities were too confusing, sometimes he just couldn't understand why Peter didn't reveal himself.
"Cool! So uh, my cousin interns at Stark Industries and she says she's never seen you in person, yet you're so close with a high schooler that you come to his Parents Day? Just curious about that…"
"Valid," Tony agreed. "I took a special interest in Peter, given his young age. I didn't believe he could be who he was at first, but I was wrong. Peter's the smartest kid I know – he's way smarter than I ever was at fifteen."
Peter blushed furiously.
"We began working closely, I got to know him and his aunt, and I can honestly say that I would be proud if he were my son. He may as well be."
"So he's not some secret love child?"
"No. Surprisingly, I don't actually have any of those floating around," Tony said proudly.
"That we know of," Peter mumbled.
"Watch it," Tony warned.
Peter gave him a challenging look. Tony scowled at him before turning back to the class.
"Peter Parker is like a son to me. So much so, that Pepper and I have named him the heir to Stark Industries."
There was a pause, and then chaos erupted. Peter wanted to yell at Tony for revealing something that big, but one look at Flash's shocked, outraged face stopped him. He stood there, looking smug, as his classmates screamed. Tony came to stand by his side.
"Feels good being a Stark, doesn't it?" Tony said, watching the room with Peter.
Peter grinned. "Not bad," he agreed. "…Will Pepper be mad that you just told my class about this?"
Tony chuckled and wrapped his arm around Peter's shoulders. "Being on the receiving end of Pepper Potts' anger is part of being a Stark, kid… We both think of you as our son, you know?"
Peter blushed. But he wore a proud grin for weeks.