A/N: Nobodythestormcrow requested that Mantis give her opinions on Star Wars. I took the Star Wars theme and ran with it. Hilarity will, of course, ensue. Thanks for the request! Hope I did you proud!
Tony Stark was, when all was said and done, not a family friendly individual. There were numerous examples of his simply stellar behaviour around kids. He was a walking warning to others. Not someone you wanted an impressionable child around.
Or a genetically enhanced child prodigy.
Unfortunately, with Rogers currently out on an assignment with Widow that Fury was heading up, Barton currently taking care of his own family, Banner working on some secretive project, Soldier out of the country - possibly out of his gourd again - and Thor off-world - that left Stark in charge of everyone's favourite diminutive red-head clone.
Normally, he'd delegate the task of looking after kids - especially this kid, this kid scared the shit out of him - to Pepper, but she too had a pressing engagement with the Stark Industries board of directors.
Everyone's created a self-aware maniacal AI out of old alien technology that tried to take over the world at one time or another after all. It was hardly a biggie.
When all else failed - TV was the nation's babysitter, right? What was better than an episode of Mythbusters? JARVIS would watch over her and he could get on with rewiring a new suit and have absolutely no contact unless it was necessary.
Wrong.
Within fifteen minutes of settling down in his workshop with coffee, she peered over his shoulder and said 'How do you compensate for overheating in the boots?'
'SH-CRAP kid!' He jumped, clutching at his heart. 'How did you get in here? JARVIS?!'
'I'm sorry Mr Stark, Ms Romanova-Barnes temporarily left my scanning range. I was attempting to find her before alerting you to the security breach.' The AI replied.
His workshop was meant to be impenetrable. It housed all his mainframes, blueprints and his precious suits. If there was a security oversight, he'd have to plug it. 'How did you get in here?' He demanded.
'Your power cables are bundled into pipes. Too small for an adult but I managed.' She replied.
And they were shielded to prevent heat leakage. Apparently also shielding them from JARVIS' scanners. He was going to do something about that by the end of the month. 'Aren't you supposed to be watching TV?' He frowned.
'Yes,' She wrinkled her nose. 'There's nothing remotely intellectual on there.'
'What do you like watching?' He asked, nonplussed. What kind of kid used the words intellectual? Well….apart from him. He'd been one of those kids, but he had been a natural genius and gifted with an incredible loneliness that he had turned to books and science to fill.
She hesitated for a moment. 'I watched Star Wars last week. It was….enjoyable.'
He raised his eyebrows. 'Okay?' He knew that Rogers hadn't grasped the core of the movies well - not that Tony could blame him, the prequels had made a mess of the plot and weren't as exciting as the original trilogy and most everyone but Banner didn't seem to have a liking for sci-fi movies. Banner professed to like the original trilogy, but Tony knew that he preferred Tolkien to Lucas.
'Can you build me a Death Star?'
He shouldn't have laughed in her face, but honestly - when most kids wanted to be Jedi, Natasha's kid wanted to be Emperor Palpatine. 'I think you're better off asking Fury that one,' He chuckled.
She seemed to consider the logic of this. 'Can you build me a lightsaber, then?'
With the current leaps and bounds of the laser industry, it would be child's play to create a custom laser powerful enough to do some of the things that a lightsaber was capable of. Tony could have done it in his sleep, but he wasn't ever going to sleep around this kid if he could help it.
'Will you leave me alone?'
'Yes.'
'Blue or green?' He asked.
'Red.' She countered.
He could practically hear the Imperial March as Darth Mantis was born.
'I am not calling you Tony-Wan.' She twirled the lightsaber expertly and Tony had to marvel at how fast the kid had picked up the skill. She'd only burnt herself twice on her own lightsaber, whereas Tony was a walking field first-aid kit.
In the last hour, he'd really gotten comfortable with having Florence around. He wouldn't say he wasn't totally terrified of her - he'd seen what her dear old mom and dad could do, after all - but he'd found a level on which they could, theoretically, bond. Bringing every nerd's fantasy to life.
'Why not?!' He whined.
'It's stupid.' She replied with venom.
'And, Darth Mantis?' He retorted and tried to copy her, which caused him to clip his own elbow and drop his faux-lightsaber on the floor. 'Owww, ow, ow!' He winced. Those things may not have the power to melt through steel just yet - but they hurt like hell in sensitive places.
Maybe he should put a patent on that. Could be a brand new non-lethal weapon. An upgraded taser. Or maybe he'd package it to Star Wars nerds with a warning label. They'd sell like hotcakes.
In the corner, holding the first aid kits, the dummies sniggered. 'I heard that!' Tony yelled. 'Get over here already before I use you two for spare parts!'
His bad tempered bandaging routine was interrupted by a shrill 'TONY! What happened to the living room?!'
'Pepper's home!' He remarked. 'Act natural!' That was to the dummies who both crashed into each other and then wheeled towards opposite ends of the room, to Florence's amusement. She liked the Dummies.
'There are burns in the couch!' Pepper Potts yelled shrilly as she came down the stairs towards the workshop. 'Tony Stark, I know you're made of money but do you think I'm made of money?! What have you been doing to your house?'
She stopped when she saw the diminutive red-head standing in the testing area. 'Oh hello, Florence.' She smiled.
'Miss Potts.' Florence replied.
'What kind of mischief has Tony been getting you int- is that a lightsaber?!' Pepper baulked.
Florence glanced down at the thing in her hand and then up at Pepper's rapidly widening eyes. 'No. He made me a really powerful laser. And then he said it wasn't cool unless you had two for a laser-duel and made himself one. He emphatically denied it was a lightsaber.'
Pepper's face had first gone white and then seemed to be flooding with pink as she glared daggers at the man who had invented, when all was said and done, a fully functional lightsaber. Call it what you will, it was still a lightsaber.
Despite that, a brittle smile had worked it's way onto her lips and she said in tones too syrupy to be true emotion 'Why don't you put that down for a minute and grab a snack upstairs?'
Florence recognised the look on Potts' face as "I'm not going to lose my temper until the child is out of the room but so help me god when she's out of the way". Natasha often wore the same look when Soldier had screwed up somewhere. It was, Soldier had explained to her once, more like a tactical retreat to heed that look and do as she was told.
She turned off the laser and carefully laid it down on the table before walking off and out of the door. Halfway up the stairs she caught 'Does health and safety mean nothing to you Tony? She's six! If I were Natasha, I'd kill you!'
'Pep, c'mon! You know what I'm like with kids!'
'You are a kid Tony Stark. You never grew up.'
'I'm keeping the lightsabers.'
'Tony-'