Chapter 3 – Family Dinner
I do not own anything except for my OC.
As Steve Rogers parked his old but cool motorcycle in the reserved parking for Avengers, next to the shiny, nicely polished, expensive cars of the Stark collections, not to imply that the motorcycle was cheap, the last time Ceci had this conversation with her BFF caused Steve to mop around for the entirety of a week, FRI greeted them in her calm, soothing voice.
"Greetings Captain Rogers and Miss Stark. Welcome back."
"Thanks, FRI." Steve said still looking very uncomfortable talking to thin air.
Ceci had given up on teasing him with the A.I because it had happened too many times to stay interesting.
"Hi FRI, how was your day today?"
Was it weird to ask a computer about their day? Yes, Ceci would totally agree; however, FRI is a Stark invention, and she has mountains of tasks to do every day, for instance:
"It was quite eventful Miss Stark," the voice followed Steve and Ceci into the waiting elevator, bringing them up to the living quarters, "Mr. Stark updated my 'sense of humor' and the update encourages me too say the day was as long as Captain America's frost in the Pacific Ocean."
Ceci stifled a laugh with a cough. Steve looked annoyed, "Ha ha very funny Tony."
As the two of them stepped into the living room plus kitchen, they were greeted by an interesting sight. Aunty Natasha was asleep kitchen counter, her red hair covered her face, dark bags under her eyes were visible to the 2 enhanced individuals, she had one hand loosely hanging on her side and the other holding the Coffee mug next to her.
Ceci wondered at the miracle of it not falling over. But this was Natasha, an international deadly assassin.
She looked at Steve calculatingly, wiggling her eyebrows at him. Steve received the signal as, "I'm going in, careful of her reflex please."
Ceci stepped silently, edging closer to the red-headed assassin.
Steve watched the scene as though a cat was approaching a sleeping tiger. Then he saw Natasha's fluttering eyelashes, it was clear that she was awake. Cecilia didn't seem to have noticed. She was a foot away from her when Natasha pounced on her tackled her to the ground.
Cecilia groaned disappointedly, "Not again, I was so careful."
"You forgot your lesson again, your environment changes every second, it is important to observe any changes at all times." Nat said matter-of-factly.
Steve approached the 2 while Nat extended a hand towards her, "You're getting sloppy, too many distractions at school?" she raised her eyebrows suggestingly.
"Distractions?" she looked bewilderedly.
"Oh, come on!" she said exasperatedly, "Even Mr. Rogers here got the joke, and you are Tony Stark's daughter. "
Ceci still looked at Nat blankly.
Natasha sighed, "Boys? Boy problems? Any handsome dudes?"
Ceci looked down at her toes, her usual cheery self-gone, she mumbled half audibly, "Not after that stuff, no boys, never, they are evil when it comes to attraction."
Natasha immediately glanced at Steve whose face was turned down in sadness and anger. Everyone in the building could not forgive what had happened to her. They all felt that they were at fault, not being able to protect their family, not coming in time.
The mood in the living room was so dark that when a CEO, Miss Potts walked in, she did a swatting motion.
"Honey, are you home yet?" said Pepper.
"Mom, I'm home. How was work?" Ceci said.
"Isn't this the opposite way around where I ask you how was your first day of school? Besides, no kid asks their parent about how their work is." Pepper said, coming over and kissing Ceci on the forehead.
"but to answer your question, it was in a way that made me wish I never agreed to be the CEO. There are too many meetings." She said, "How will the company evolve when all we're doing is discussing the past?" not expecting a response and out of breath.
"Bad day?" Nat asked in a cool way.
"Yes," Pepper answered, seeming to have let off the steam.
"Hey, Steve." Said Pepper. And Steve replied.
"Dinner will be served at 7:30, Ceci go do your homework."
"Okay, mom."
"Steve, what are you going to be doing?" Ceci asked.
"I might learn digital drawing? I don't know what that is but Natasha mentioned it before. I'll look into that."
Ceci made her way into her room, which was large and filled with stuff, she was not a neat person.
She placed her schoolbag on the ground and sat on her writing desk.
She activated her holographical screens around her, as she has finished all of her homework, to start working on her earpiece.
She pulled out the blueprint from Tony's archive and set off to design it. She aimed to enable the speech system for the A.I and not to respond to only her verbal commands, but a visual command.
A microscopic camera and scanner were added to the earpiece so it could function when she wrote the name of her A.I anywhere when followed by a command.
She did a victory gesture and put on the earpiece.
"Hello, Hon." Hon was the name of her AI.
"Hello Ceci, it is a pleasure to meet you."
"I'm going to try some functions, please disable the verbal recognition."
"Verbal recognition disabled."
She took out a piece of paper and wrote: Hon, reroute to the school.
And then there was Hon telling her 3 fastest options that could take her to the school.
Next, she typed, "Hon, pull up security footage of the living room."
the security footage of Steve struggling to detach the 'pen' from his digital drawing board was shown.
"This is handy." She said, putting everything away and preparing to head down for dinner.
She picked up Steve on the way, laughing while telling him that he only needed to use his hands and imitate a pen to draw. Steve was so tired of the technology he sank off the couch. "I'll draw with a pen and paper please"
At dinner, they had sushi today, Tony and Bruce came in with their clothes with grease. Dinner was spent happily for them.
Tony and Bruce continued their discussion on a new invention after asking how her day went. Cecilia listened intently to their conversation she was so concentrated that she was holding the same amount of food to her mouth for the past 5 minutes.
Steve was sure that Pepper was about to ban science on the table soon.
In the end, dinner took 2 hours to finish, not thanks to Steve's super-fast metabolism, Natasha's poking and checking of the food and the conversation between the two geniuses.
Soon after the dishes were washed and placed, Ceci returned to her room, turned on her television to the news.
"Today, down in Queens, the new vigilante called Spider-Man stopped another robbery, nothing else about said vigilante is known except that he can shoot webs."
A video showing 'Spider-Man' swinging from building to building is shown.
CC: Did you see the news about Spiderman?
MJ: Yeah! I think he is from Queens
CC: his uniform is…
MJ: ha, true
They continued their discussion for about an hour before Ceci yawned.
CC: gotta sleep soon. See you tmr.
MJ: see u
Ceci when to bed, thinking about heroes, powers.