Peter was trying very hard not to freak out. And he was doing okay, if he could say so himself.

When Happy had showed up at his apartment to say that Mr. Stark needed his help ASAP, he had easily agreed and ran to his room to get his suit before Aunt May noticed he was leaving. When Happy said that wouldn't be necessary, he had hesitated, but still followed him down to the waiting car with little protest. On the ride over to the Stark residence, he had managed to annoy Happy enough to make him turn up the radio—no groaning about irritating kids or verbal request for him to stop talking, which was incredible progress.

Peter Parker was the epitome of chill right now. Whatever it was that Mr. Stark needed him for, he could handle it. He was super calm and super collected.

Except, he was totally freaking out. Like, seriously. Mr. Stark never asked for his help, so this must be big. And he would be lying if he said he wasn't nervous, but he was almost eighteen now. He was basically adult, and he would act like one. Mr. Stark would definitely be impressed by his ability to remain calm under pressure; or he would be, if Peter could manage to keep his panicking internalized.

Peter wasn't surprised when Happy walked him to the door, but he was surprised when he started to leave as soon as Peter entered the spacious home of his mentor.

"Uh, Mr. Happy, uh sir—you're not coming in too?"

Okay, so the talking thing wasn't working so great right now, due to the aforementioned freaking out. But he had time to work on that before he found Mr. Stark. He just had to figure out what Happy was up to first.

Happy grinned at him, and if Peter wasn't nervous before, he definitely was then.

"No way, kid. I'm gonna find somewhere else to be until the storm clears."

"Storm?!" Peter's voice raised an octave in his initial panic, but he cleared his throat and tried to lower it to a more natural tone of voice when he said, "I mean, what storm?"

Happy laughed. Actually laughed. And then he walked back to the car, got in, and drove away with no explanation.

Peter needed no further confirmation. He was so screwed.

The teenage superhero audibly gulped as he entered the mansion, closing the door softly behind him. He carefully took in his surroundings as he moved through the foyer into the living room. Everything seemed to be in order—the Stark home was immaculate as always. Lavish furniture surrounded by high tech appliances and expensive art, the only sign that the room was even lived in was the section in the corner dedicated to baby Morgan's play pin and toys, though even all of her stuff was currently neatly put away in the color-coordinated bins.

More telling, though, was the fact that there was no sign of the Starks. The house was completely silent, as though it were holding its breath in anticipation of the supposed "storm."

Okay, so Peter's not-really-but-kind-of-a-little-freaking-out had upgraded to I'm-tottally-wigging-out-right-now. If he was imagining the house doing anything other than being a house, he was letting this not-yet-a-situation get to him too much.

But he was Spider-man, and Spider-man wasn't afraid of suspiciously quiet houses. So he was gonna play it cool.

"Mr. Stark?!" he called out, trying to keep his voice neutral. "Mr. Stark, are you home?"

"Peter!" The response was almost immediate, and Peter whipped his head around to find his fellow Avenger racing down the stairs in a bigger hurry than he had ever seen him.

"What's going on? What's happening?" Peter was trying very hard to hold onto what was left of his cool, but that was proving difficult when he saw his normally perfectly composed mentor in such a state of disarray—he was wearing a wrinkled cat t-shirt with various stains, many recent-looking, and one long tear on the right sleeve; his hair was messy and missing it's normal gelled-look; he wasn't wearing shoes and was missing one sock; and his eyes held the wild, manic look of a crazed man.

Something was clearly wrong, but what was it? Aliens? Wizards—but the bad kind, not the fun, necklace wearing kind? Was Loki in a particularly bad mood? Had a genetically-mutated lion escaped the zoo and found solace in Mr. Stark's bed room? Was Mrs. Pepper mad at him?

A million different scenarios flashed through his hyperactive mind as he waited for Mr. Stark's answer, but nothing could have prepared him for the truth.

"I lost her, Pete. I looked away for one second, and she was just gone."

Mr. Stark was gripping his shoulders as though he wasn't sure if he wanted to pull him in for a hug or shake answers he didn't have out of him. Either way, Peter remained incredibly confused. "What? Who did you lose, sir?"

Tony's grip on Peter's shoulders tightened, and he was surprised to see real panic in his mentor's eyes. That's when it clicked, moments before Mr. Stark confirmed it. "Morgan. Pepper left me alone with her for the first time since she started crawling, and I've already lost her. It's been two hours, Peter. Two hours."

This was... definitely not the disaster scenario Peter had imagined when Happy brought him here. But that didn't make it any less serious. His honorary baby sister was missing, and her father was currently freaking out even more than Peter was (something that he would remind himself to be proud of later), so that left Peter in charge of remaining calm and finding a solution—or rather, finding the rouge ten-month-old baby.

"She couldn't have gotten far, sir. Everything will be fine. Pepper will never even know." Peter tried to reassure his mentor, meeting his eyes solemnly so that he could see how serious he was.

"She always finds out, Peter. Always." Mr. Stark said this was uncharacteristic grave certainty, but finally released his shoulders and stepped away from him, seeming to gather himself now that he had someone else to ground him.

Peter couldn't deny that he was ecstatic that he was that person, but now was definitely not the time, so he straightened his shoulders and did what he did not do best—took charge of the situation. "Where did you see her last?"

It seemed like the obvious place to start, and Mr. Stark didn't appear to disagree as he immediately led him to his lab in the basement of his mansion.

Peter looked around the workshop with increasing trepidation. The lab of a retired superhero was definitely not the safest place for a child—half-finished weapons upgrades, random bits of scrap metal and loose wires, what looked like a new spider suit, which was super cool and he really needed to go check it out—

Focus, Peter. There's a baby on the loose.

With only a mild bit of difficulty, Peter forced himself to look away from the new spidey suit, taking in the rest of the lab for clues.

"Uh, Mr. Stark. I can't help but notice that this may not be the, um… well, the best place for a kid to be."

He turned to face Tony just in time to see him roll his eyes. "You gotta give me more credit than that, kid. She was in that play pin thing over there," he pointed to an area I the corner of the lab that had was gated and had padded floors and toys strewn about it, "and I was there," he now indicated the table directly across from the Morgan Cage, "working on an upgrade to Barnes' arm. She was just playing, happy as can be, the entire time I kept an eye on her. But the second I turn away to grab a new part, she disappears. I can't figure out how she did it or where she could have possibly gone. I've looked everywhere."

Peter scratched his head, taking in the situation. "Doesn't FRIDAY have footage that could help? I thought this whole lab was under surveillance."

Tony crossed his arms and seemed to be visibly restraining himself from rolling his eyes again. "Of course she should, which is why I already checked. It was the first thing I did when I couldn't find her on this level."

"So… there was no footage?" Peter felt pretty stupid asking the question, but full understanding was kind of important give the situation. Luckily, Mr. Stark answered the question with only the slightest amount of sarcasm, which for him, was as good as a gentle explanation.

"No footage. She seems to be… going through some kind of glitch."

Peter's previous panic increased ten-fold as he asked, "FRIDAY can do that?"

Tony shrugged, though Peter knew him well enough to know that the tense set of his shoulders and the slight furrow of his brow along with the lack of a smirk indicated that he was unsettled by this as well. "Any tech can have glitches every now and then, but FRIDAY…"

"But FRIDAY shouldn't," Peter finished, trying to pull all of the pieces together as he analyzed the scene of the crime again. "Could the glitch be an indicator for some kind of security breach? I mean…" Peter hesitated, turning back to his mentor to take in his only mildly anxious expression before he asked, "You don't think someone took her, do you?"

Mr. Stark immediately shook his head. "Not a chance. The only part of FRIDAY's programming that has been affected is the security footage of the house. There have been no perimeter breaches and no attempts at hacking into the system. Besides, I was in the room and I was turned away from her for thirty seconds, tops. I would have seen someone if she had been taken."

Peter nodded, visibly relaxing. Though he was still definitely confused. "Okay, so how did she get out of the pin?"

"No idea. The latch is kind of stupidly easy to lift, but Morgan's definitely too small to reach the it. And she can crawl now, but I'm pretty sure she can't climb this." Tony walked towards the gated-area that had held his daughter only an hour ago to show Peter what he meant. The teen crime-fighter dutifully focused his heightened senses on every detail he could find, most of it inconsequential, except—

"Are those track marks?"

Tony snapped his head down to look where Peter was pointing to the marks on the padded floor, only to deflate instantly. "Yeah, those are just from RoRo."

Peter furrowed his brow, "RoRo? You mean your Roomba?"

Tony nodded, "Yeah, that's what Morgan calls it. She loves the damn thing—that's why it was in there with her. She cried until I put it in with her, and I figured it could only help, considering the mess that kid leaves behind."

"Mr. Stark!" Peter exclaimed, the first puzzle piece fitting together in his mind's eye. "That's how she got out."

He watched as understanding dawned on Tony's face with more pride than he cared to admit. "She crawled onto the Roomba, which made her tall enough to unlatch the gate." Mr. Stark turned to him, smiling at him for the first time that day as some of his worry melted away. They at least knew how she got out, which was the first step to tracking her down. "Nice work kid. I can't believe I hadn't thought of that, but really. Good job."

Peter tried to keep his grinning to a minimum as he said, "Thanks Mr. Stark. Now we just need to figure out where she went."

Mr. Stark nodded, rubbing at his chin the way he usually did when he was working at a problem. "I think I know where to start."


"You were right to question FRIDAY's glitch," Mr. Stark told him as they entered the walled-off section of the lab that housed all of the security tech. The screens that usually played the real-time footage of the lab, Morgan's room, and the exterior of the house—the only areas of the property under constant surveillance—were all currently black. Mr. Stark strode over to the keyboard situated in front of the largest screen in the room, which also happened to be the only one currently working. "I had given a little thought to it before, but was too focused on trying to find Morgan as fast as possible that I didn't consider it enough. But it's not so much a glitch as the security monitors have just been shut down—otherwise there would be other systems malfunctioning and FRIDAY would have immediately alerted me to the breach. Not to mention the incredibly convenient timing of it all."

Peter nodded, though Tony couldn't see him from where he stood behind his shoulder, watching him type at the keypad almost furiously. "So, you do think that someone has hacked into the FRIDAY?"

Tony scoffed, his mouth pulling up into a half-smirk as he said, "No. I think FRIDAY has shut down the monitors herself."

"Why would she do that?" Peter asked, his brow furrowed in thought. The AI was extremely reliable. He couldn't imagine her doing something like shutting down one something so important.

"FRIDAY is one of the most advanced AI in the world, Pete. Which has both its good and bad qualities," he answered, still not looking away from the screen. "She's formed quite an attachment to the kid, so she's subjecting herself to the whims of an infant far more than she should be."

"You… you mean FRIDAY helped Morgan get out of the pin and is now letting her cruise around the house undetected just because she thought that's what Morgan wanted?" Peter felt crazier and crazier as his question fell from his mouth, but Mr. Stark was unfazed.

"Yup. But luckily, I'm still the boss. So all it takes is a little manual labor and TLC to get the monitors back up and widen the surveillance to the whole house and… bingo," Mr. Stark finished typing with a flourish as the previously-blank screens came to life just in time to see Morgan roll past the camera that was recording the living room. "Yeah, FRIDAY is so getting an update after this."

Mr. Stark jumped up from his chair to race back upstairs, Peter hot on his heels.

"How did she get up the stairs?" Peter asked incredulously as they climbed up said stairs, looking around in awe for some sign of Baby Stark's great escape.

"Ramps," Tony answered, wrenching the door to the ground floor open. "They pop out of the wall. For the Roomba my daughter is currently joyriding on."

Said daughter was blessedly still doing doughnuts in the living room when they got there, and she screeched in joy when she saw them. "Dada!" she cried, banging her fists on the Roomba the way she did whenever she got excited.

Tony breathed a sigh of relief before swooping down to pick up his daughter. "Morgan? What did you think you were doing?" he demanded, holding her up in front of his face to do a full health evaluation.

Peter couldn't resist laughing out loud when the ten-month-old, who was still far too young to understand most of the English language or read the tone of a room, giggled and smoosed her stressed-out father's face between her tiny hands.

His outburst drew said-infants attention, and she grinned at him, flashing the few teeth she had. "Petta! Petta!" she yelled, his name coming out garbled and unclear, but he easily recognized it by now. He walked over to her and she stretched out her little arms for him to pick her up, which he did after Tony nodded at him in permission.

"Heeeeeey, Iron Baby," he cooed at her. "You gave us quite the scare, you know."

"She did?"

Peter and Tony both whirled around in shock, having been too preoccupied with making sure Morgan was okay to notice that the front door had opened and Pepper had returned from Stark Industries. She was now watching them from the hallway between the living room and foyer, her expression expectant as she took in her little family.

Peter carefully kept his mouth shut and looked back down at Morgan, pretending to be too engrossed with her to answer.

"She was just crawling a little too close to the kitchen, but we have everything under control. Obviously," Mr. Stark said, walking over to his wife and enveloping her in a hug. "How are things going at the office?"

"Mmmhmm," Pepper hummed, unconvinced but deciding to let it go. For now. "Everything was running fine, so it was just a quick check. Peter," she said, moving her attention to the suddenly tense teen, "I didn't know you would be stopping by today."

He carefully avoided looking at Mr. Stark as he answered, "Oh, uh, yeah. I stopped by to ask Mr. Stark a few questions about my physics homework."

Pepper seemed to buy it, if her easy smile was anything to go by, and she approached where he was currently bouncing Morgan on his hip. "Were you a good girl while Mommy was gone?" she cooed at her daughter, gently extricating her from Peter's hands to hug her to her chest.

Morgan giggled, looking up at her mother in joy as she answered, "No!"

Peter couldn't help it. He burst out laughing, Mr. Stark quickly joining him as they doubled over with laughter.

Pepper, however, was concerned. "No?" she questioned, her brow furrowed as she looked down at her happily-gurgling child.

"Kids," Tony said, still chuckling under his breath as he slung one arm around his wife and winked at Peter. "They say the darndest things."

"She was great, Mrs. Stark," Peter assured, saying it easily and with little guilt. It was true, after all. Though Morgan had nearly given both her dad and honorary big brother a heart attack with her daring escape from baby jail, she was always great. She was definitely the coolest baby Peter knew, anyway.

Of course, she was the only baby Peter knew. But still.

Pepper eyed them both cautiously, but soon relaxed. She had long ago learned that questioning everything that Tony (and especially Tony and Peter) did was not worth the effort. Nothing was on fire and her daughter was happy and safe, so she would let them off the hook. "Are you staying for dinner, Peter? I can make you favorite. Homemade pizza, right?"

"Oh, yeah, that'd be great! Just let me check with Aunt May real quick," Peter said, hopping up from where he was leaning against the couch to get his phone out and call his Aunt.

"Go ahead and invite her too, Pete," Mr. Stark said, moving to take his daughter back from Pepper so she could take her shoes off and put her bag down before moving to the kitchen, presumably to start cooking. "I've been meaning to talk to both of you about where you want to go to college anyway."

Peter beamed at his mentor, "Sounds great, sir."

Tony rolled his eyes. "I've told you a million times, kid. Just call me Tony."

Pepper popped her head back into the living room just long enough to yell, "I think 'Dad' would be an acceptable substitution as well at this point."

Tony scoffed indignantly, but offered no verbal rebuttal.

Peter dutifully ignored both of them, though he felt his cheeks tinge pink as he dialed Aunt May's number.

He continued to make funny faces at Morgan throughout the short call, causing her to giggle uncontrollably all the while. After the call had ended and May had agreed to head to the Stark house for their family dinner, Peter moved to the kitchen to help Pepper cook while Tony kept Morgan occupied in the living room.

Pepper smiled at him, and happily accepted his help, blessedly not bringing up the whole "dad" thing again. He couldn't deny that Tony was the closest thing Peter had ever had to a father figure, excluding his Uncle Ben, but he wasn't just going to start calling him that, even if it did carry some appeal. At least not yet.

For now, he was happy with this still relatively new family dynamic, especially with the addition of Morgan. He had never thought that he would have the opportunity to actually be a brother, given the circumstances that life had thrown at him; but time had a funny way of changing things, and this was one such example that Peter couldn't be happier about.