Congratulations, it's a Boy
Chapter 7
Summary:
A certain "glowy thingy" creates problems for Peter, and headaches for Tony.
Tony paced his suite in the hotel.
"Okay, let's go over this. How did I manage to miss Peter taking on weapons dealers? He was talking like he'd run into these guys before. Why wasn't that in any of the reports?"
"The last report you asked for was the previous afternoon in which Peter stopped a bike thief and gave a woman directions."
"Right, the churro lady."
"Correct. And immediately after that, Peter witnessed ATMs being broken into at a nearby bank and went to stop the robbery. He reported it to Happy, but Happy has not yet submitted his weekly report."
"Okay, I could see how an ATM robbery might not be an immediate concern, but if they were using high tech weaponry during the robbery, that should've been a red flag. That should've been reported to Damage Control right away."
"I'm uncertain whether or not Peter made that part clear to Happy. He tends to get excited and ramble."
"And the kid wouldn't think to make an emphasis on that. Everything's important, as far as he's concerned."
Tony sighed. This was a mess.
"So Peter confronted the bank robbers, then went home that night…"
"The next night he opted to go to a party thrown by someone at his school rather than go on patrol. But while outside on the roof, he saw a weapon being discharged in the distance and went to investigate. He was caught while attempting to apprehend the weapons dealers."
Tony couldn't help but wonder why he'd even taken the suit to a school party to begin with. Peter had already shown himself to be the type of kid that didn't seek attention, so he must've gone to the party expecting trouble.
"And why, exactly, wasn't I informed that any of this was happening?"
"You hadn't asked for another report, and none of the intervention protocols had been triggered."
Tony's stomach sank. So, it was his fault. He'd set up a system where he was only informed when Peter was in grave danger, and now he was upset that he hadn't known sooner that the kid was in trouble. He hadn't asked for another report because he'd been busy in India and he'd just assumed that Peter would be doing what he normally did. Instead, the kid had literally gone from giving old ladies directions to going after serious criminals.
He'd basically done the equivalent of leaving a toddler in a room full of matches and assuming everything was fine until the fire department came.
He was an idiot.
"Friday, alert the FBI to the existence of these arms dealers in Queens. Emphasize that they seem to be dealing in alien tech. Send them all the relevant information the suit has gathered that doesn't give away Peter's identity."
"On it, Boss."
"And keep tabs on the investigation."
-0-0-0-0-0-
Tony still had a couple more days in India, so he kept the remote armor controls close and asked Friday to give him regular reports. He wouldn't be making the same mistake twice.
Unfortunately, the time difference meant that he wasn't sleeping as much as he'd like. Peter's normal active times in the suit - from afternoon until later into the night - were currently Tony's middle-of-the-night to early morning. But, he wanted regular reports.
Even if those reports lately had amounted to Peter staying in all Saturday afternoon.
And just like clockwork, Friday chimed in with another report. "It's now 4pm Sunday in New York, and Peter is in his apartment. He has not used the suit."
"Great. Soon as I start asking for regular reports, the kid decides to spend the weekend inside."
Monday was equally uneventful, but Tuesday rolled around soon enough. Before he'd even received his first report from Friday, Happy was calling him.
"What's going on?"
"Nothing, just checking in. And, I wanted to give you a Spider update and a moving update."
"Okay, shoot."
"Wait, I just realized what time it is there. Sorry, Tony. Want me to call back in the morning?
"No, I wasn't asleep. Don't be a tease; give me the reports."
"Okay, well…" and Tony could tell right away by Happy's 'trust-me-I'm-a-professional' voice that everything was fine.
"I got an alert that Peter was leaving New York so I checked in with him. It's fine - he's headed to D.C. for a school decathlon. I also got the last of the less-sensitive equipment out of the tower and it's arrived safely at the compound. One more trip for the remaining items should do it, and we'll be using one of the automated Stark jets for increased security."
"Sounds utterly perfect. Thanks, Happy."
Once Happy disconnected, Tony decided he needed more info on Peter.
"Friday, find that school decathlon in D.C. See if you can get it's schedule."
"Found it. Schools are traveling to D.C. today, are scheduled to stay in local hotels overnight, and then compete tomorrow. After the competition, most schools are doing sightseeing in the area and then going back."
"Fantastic. Sounds like the perfect time to head back to New York."
-0-0-0-0-0-
For the plane ride back to New York, Tony opted to sleep. He wasn't totally sleep-deprived; he'd been resting here and there between reports and getting business done, but it was nice to imagine a solid 15 hours of uninterrupted rest. Peter would be busy at his decathlon, Happy would be making the final preparations for the move… there was nothing to worry about.
What a nice change that would be.
Tony's flight left in the morning, which was late night on the East Coast. Peter would be going to bed to get a good night's rest before his decathlon the next day. In fact, according to the GPS, which he had Friday check one last time before takeoff, Peter was at the hotel, safe and sound.
"Okay, Friday, go ahead and suspend the reports for the duration of the flight; I'm going to get some sleep."
"Rest well, Boss."
Of course, as was usually the case with these things, Tony couldn't drift right to sleep as soon as the plane was in the air. He may have been tired, but his internal clock was telling him it was daytime, so his body was fighting rest.
Opening up his laptop, he decided to work a little more on the Iron Spider suit to pass the time. He'd just about figured out how to give Peter a solid amount of protection without compromising his flexibility too much. Of course, running simulations only went so far; in order to really fine tune the suit he'd need Peter to try it out.
After a few hours of working, his body was finally starting to give up on the whole 'daytime' idea and he was getting tired enough to sleep. He closed his laptop and drifted off, imagining what tests he could run in realtime with Peter in the new suit.
-0-0-0-0-0-
Tony woke up to his stomach grumbling. "Ugh. Friday, what time is it?"
"It is 12:03pm, Eastern Standard Time. You have been asleep for approximately ten hours."
He must've been way more tired than he'd thought; there were only about 2 hours left before he'd land back in New York.
"What's Peter up to?"
"There has been no data reported by the suit. The GPS signal is still in D.C."
"Guess he decided not to wear the suit to the decathlon - probably smart." Tony stretched and decided he'd better go to the galley and see what there was to eat.
He was halfway through a better-than-average cob salad, when Friday sounded an alert and turned on a nearby screen.
"Boss, there's a problem in D.C."
The screen was playing a live news report from a station in D.C. covering a "developing incident" at the Washington Monument. Apparently there'd been some kind of explosion inside the elevator and…
"What the hell is he doing?!"
… Spider-Man was launching himself through a window near the top of the monument.
"What in the- How old is this footage? Is this live?"
"This particular clip is from approximately five minutes ago, when the news cameras arrived on the scene. However, some stations are now beginning to show footage taken earlier by cellphones showing Spider-Man climbing the outside of the monument."
"What's the current situation? What is the suit reporting?"
Tony's mind was racing. His closest remote suit was still at the tower in New York. Even at top speed, it would take too long to get it from New York to D.C.
"The suit is not reporting anything, and the GPS is still showing a location of Peter's hotel."
Which wasn't possible, since Peter was clearly in the suit. It should've been reporting something unless…
"God DAMN it! He took out the tracker… and apparently found a way to disable the Training Wheels protocol."
He'd designed the suit so that once the Training Wheels protocol was disabled it would stop automatically sending activity reports to Friday. He'd figured that when the time came, and Peter was ready for a full-featured suit, he wouldn't need constant monitoring.
Of course he'd imagined that happening sometime in the distant future, not a couple of months after the kid started using the new suit.
"Force the issue. Bypass the suit security and find out what's going on."
"Bypassing suit security."
Tony watched the news as they kept reporting what they knew - which was basically nothing. Something had exploded, they believed the elevator might be compromised, and some masked vigilante was shown again and again forcing his way into the monument through a tiny window while police shouted at him to stand down.
"According to the suit data, Peter stopped the elevator from falling long enough to rescue the passengers. He is now at the bottom of the elevator shaft, working his way outside toward where he apparently left his clothes."
"So he's done." Tony sighed and sat back, running both hands through his hair, wondering how soon Peter was going to make it all fall out.
Unfortunately, Tony had no way to verify from the plane that the scene was actually safe and there were no more bombs anywhere.
That was probably the only good thing about the Training Wheels protocol being deactivated - the suit would be communicating with Peter directly now. There was no way it wouldn't warn him if more explosives were detected nearby.
Now Tony had a decision to make. He could reactivate Training Wheels, and this time raise the security level so high that Peter would need a super computer and a couple of months to crack it.
Or, he could just let this one go.
Putting an AI together for Peter's suit hadn't been something he'd taken lightly. He'd started with the basic framework needed to run the suit and interface with Friday… but then when it came time to add elements of personality, using one of his ready-made AI's hadn't felt right.
So he'd started from scratch.
An adult female. Kind, supportive, utterly sincere, a good listener… everything he figured a young geek with few friends would probably appreciate. It was only after he'd finished that it'd occurred to him that he'd basically been building Peter a pseudo-mother.
Not long after that, he'd realized that the very same attributes he'd put into the suit's AI were the ones he remembered most about Peter's mother Sandra. And boy, was that ever a secret to take straight to his grave.
And now he was left with this nice little conundrum. Even though he knew with 100 percent certainty that the AI in the suit was just a computer, taking it- taking her away from Peter after he'd already met her almost felt like ripping another person out of his life.
Pushing his half-eaten salad to the side, Tony laid his head down in despair.
"Friday, remind me how I got myself into this mess?"
Tony huffed a little laugh at Friday's answer: "You didn't wear a condom, Boss."
Notes:
I had to change a tiny thing from the movie in order to make my story timeline make sense. Regarding the timeline between Liz's party and the events at the Staten Island Ferry, I'm assuming everything takes place back-to-back as it appears to in the movie. So forget about the part in the movie where the school's news show says the decathlon took place over the weekend. It was midweek, as far as this story is concerned.