Twenty One

December 24, 2016 – Stark Industries Christmas Party!

"Welcome to my YouTube channel, I'm Tony Stark and an engineer!" Tony smiled, looking smart in a black suit with a festive Christmas tie. "It's Christmas Eve and today is our Christmas party at SI, things will be a little weird with the video layout this time around. I will be setting up cameras in every corner of the party, to get as real of a feel of the party as you're going to get. I am recording this intro and then my editors will edit the footage, get rid of the boring stuff and that's what you will see. So here we go, SI Christmas Party 2016!"

The video faded to a view of Tony Stark standing a distance away, drinking a sparkling beverage and talking animatedly to a woman, Pepper lurking in the background and watching to make sure everything went smoothly. One might have thought she looked a little jealous, but one never knew.

The camera changed angles to see Peter walking through the door, nervously. He kept brushing down his suit and fidgeting with his tie that his Aunt helped dress him with.

"Peter!" Tony waved at him. He smiled tightly and made his way over to the billionaire. "Meet Rafael Reif, President of MIT."

"Wow, great to meet you, sir!" Peter shook his hand happily.

"Great to meet you too, Peter. Hopefully you'll join us at MIT someday."

"I need to talk to my family before making a decision."

"Wise man. Well, Tony, I must head off. I'm getting that signal from Christine. We'll be in touch. I'm interested to hear more about this sponsorship."

"Thank you for coming, Rafael. I'll have my finance people send over that donation for the engineering labs. It's criminal what these kids have to work with these days."

"We appreciate that, Tony." He shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Peter."

"You too!" He called awkwardly as he walked away. "Mr. Stark! You can't just throw me in the deep end like that!"

Tony laughed and ruffled his hand. "You did fine." Peter pouted as he pushed his hair back down.

"Tony!" Pepper yelled. Tony sighed.

"Well, duty calls. Enjoy the party, Pete. Everyone knows to not give you anything but water."

"Mr. Stark!" He protested.

"Sorry, kid. Gotta be a responsible adult."

"Aunt May lets me have champagne on Christmas."

"Well, I'm not Aunt May." He stared off into the room. Peter furrowed his brows. "I got addicted to alcohol because my father forced a mug of whiskey into my hand and wouldn't let me leave until it was finished. I didn't know I was addicted until it was too late. I won't do that to you, Peter."

"But my…you know…"

"I don't care if you metabolize it quickly or not, Peter. Not on my watch." He put a hand on Peter's shoulder and Peter looked up at him.

"Tony!"

"Gotta go, Peter." He squeezed his shoulder and went in the direction that he was being commanded. Peter stared after him and turned and looked around the huge room for someone he recognized.

"Hey, Parker!" He heard from behind him. He spun and saw the interns from R&D there, waving at him. A grin enhanced his face and he made his way over to the crowd.

"Hey, guys!" He grinned. "I was afraid I was gonna be the only intern here."

"No way, we all get invites. Super awesome."

"Yeah! One intern gets an award every year for biggest contribution, but we all know who will get it." A girl teased.

"Who?" Peter asked, confused.

"You, of course." She shook her head.

"What?" Peter gasped.

"You've helped Mr. Stark with his suit and other projects. You get much more hands on than we get." Peter frowned but didn't disagree.

Pepper frowned at Tony as he finally made his way to her.

"What took so long?" She sniped.

Tony sighed.

"I was in the middle of a conversation."

She frowned but didn't say anything.

"Whatever. We need to get your speech fed to the prompter. So, I need it."

"Oh, I'm going free-lance."

"Tony!"

"Virginia!" He mocked. She frowned deeply.

"We need to stay on time. It is very important." She stated clearly.

"And I will." He said as he walked away. He made eye contact with a camera. "Don't date people you work with." He rolled his eyes.

Peter was overwhelmed as the Manager of R&D under Tony was trying to get him to intern under him, instead of Tony.

"Um, sir, I'm honored but I like working with Mr. Stark."

"We could really use your exper…"

"You aren't poaching my intern, are you, Sam?" Tony purred from behind him. He gulped and turned around.

"Of…Of course not, sir! I was just kidding! Right, Peter?" He glared at Peter to say right and just to be a thorn in his side, he didn't say anything, just let this Sam guy dig himself a deeper hole for himself.

"I think we need to have a little meeting. Monday, 10 am?"

"I usually come in at 11, sir." Sam gulped.

"Make that 9. See you then." He firmly said. "Come on, Peter. I want to introduce you to someone." Peter obediently followed him.

Tony brought him up to meet Pepper.

"Wow, Miss Potts! Nice to meet you!" He held out his hand.

"Tony…" She said but shook his hand with a smile.

"His friend is a big fan of yours. Peter, tell her about MJ."

"Oh! Yeah! MJ's a big fan of yours! She looks up to the way that you…how did she put it… oh! Strong armed your way into a male dominated industry with your estrogen and feminine wiles."

Pepper had a nice laugh, Peter realized as she let out a soft laugh.

"Well, that is very sweet of her. What was her full name again?"

"Oh, I didn't say it to begin with…But it's Michelle Jones. She likes to go by MJ though."

"Hm. Well, it was very nice to meet you. I'll have to visit you in Tony's lab sometime."

"That would be great!" He cheered.

Tony got up to the podium and the conversation muted itself without him having to clear his throat.

"Thank you all for coming to our annual Christmas Party. I want to start off by saying that this was quite a year both personally and professionally. I met some great people, came to some realizations for what I want for the future and what I don't want. I want to thank every single employee at SI for adapting from our weapons manufacturing to our technological and engineered driven objectives with an extremely high employee retention rate. It was humbling to see how many of you wanted to stay with us because you see something in me, in Pepper, in our management. We are providing a five percent increase in wages, effective today." The room burst out into cheer. "We are hoping that that will help with the ever-increasing cost of living here in New York, where most of you live." They continued to clap. "Something that I didn't think I would be as grateful for as I am is my YouTube channel. Thank you to all those who watched my videos and liked them, it means a lot. I was always in front of a camera, in front of the media. But this is the first time where it was controlled by me and not someone who didn't have 100% my best interests at heart. So, it has been healing in a way. I have gone back to working with the Avengers part time – I am working with my intern on a lot of SI projects and some personal that takes up a lot of my time. Which is good, because according to my doctor, I am almost fully healed…" Another loud cheer broke out, which made Tony smile.

"Now, let's get to what we really wanted out of this party other than the dressing up, eating me out of house and home and drinking! The awards!" He opened his jacket and pulled out card. "First up, R&D!"

The award ceremony continued on until Peter's attention was piqued. To be fair, he didn't know most of these people.

"And now, finally, we arrive at the interns." Tony shuffled his cards to the intern one. "Now, we like to recognize all of our interns but we always award one who has gone above and beyond what we asked of them, that they are looking to be a perfect fit for SI when they are eligible for full time work, judged by a panel of people that aren't directly in charge of said interns and they have decided the Most Valuable Intern of 2016 to be…Peter Parker!"

Peter's eyes went wide in shock as the whole room stood up in applause. Peter got up to his feet at the push of a fellow intern, Scott. He made his way to the stage.

"In addition to the plaque and award letter, as Peter is underage so we can't offer him fine wine like the other winners…We are awarding him with a Special Edition Lego Death Star Kit." They cheered. Peter smiled up at him as he accepted the award and the gifts. "Good job, kid."

"Thanks, Tony." Peter smiled bashfully.