A/N; I am entirely reader-supported. Here are my special thanks to those of you who enjoy my writing enough to support me with your hard earned money on my pa-atreon page. Not just them though, special thanks to everyone who even just reads this story, reviews it, favourites or follows it. You're the reason I keep going. Thank you. Welcome to this new story, feel free to check out my other work if this is your first.
"So, Master Kent, I hope you understand the gravity of what has just occurred," the solicitor spoke to me while we sat in a luxurious office. I nursed the glass of wine that had been given to me. Underage drinking clearly didn't matter much to these people.
"You say my grandfather left me a legacy in his will?" I asked, waiting for him to continue the explanation that had been hinted at in the letter. In the past six months, Kelex and I had spent the time putting the finishing touches on my identity. There was no difficulty in hacking into Britain's school records and registering me as a home-schooled student. The A-levels had been a challenge to register for. I had to forge or even just hack my way into a lot of systems to get my shot, and when I did, I didn't hold back one whit. I'd been a lawyer in my first life. In this one, I was augmented with the intellect of Krypton's foremost scientist. Let's just say with that combination, I'd set a new record for the exams. A completely perfect score.
I would have kept a lower profile if I didn't have lofty goals ahead of me. True freedom. A rat had no freedom stuck on the ground. No, the only true freedom would be found in the skies. By rising above everyone else. That's the freedom I desire.
"Yes, he did. He initially intended to leave it to you plainly as a grant, but as my client, I advised him to avoid the scandal that such a legacy would leave on the family's name. Instead, we've used a half-secret will that names me as the trustee for the money left to you," I nodded as he spoke, following along with his explanation.
"That means the money left to you, some fifty million pounds, is being held in trust in my own account. As you remain underage, I will execute a monthly stipend for you to the tune of a hundred thousand. Once you reach your twenty-first birthday, the entirety of the sum will be transferred to your account," he said with a placid smile, a smile that fooled no one. I could see it in the way he tensed as he said those words. He was used to dealing with spoiled rich kids that would rant and rave at such limitations, but honestly, I didn't care.
Could I have Kelex compel him to change his mind? Maybe. But what did it matter? I'd be in school for the next four years either way, and a 100 grand a month was more than enough for anyone to live off of. More than enough for me to live with absolute freedom, to be honest.
"I agree to those terms," I said, watching him release a breath before continuing. "On one condition." I raised a single finger and let him tense up before I spoke, "I want a car." He just nodded as if he got requests like those all the time.
He handed me a card from his drawer. It had my new name etched on it in fancy cursive, 'Clark Kent'. I held the metallic card and flipped it around my fingers.
"Pay for the car with that. The amount will be deducted directly from the legacy. Needless to say, don't go crazy," I replied, taking his outstretched hand in my own. I returned to the apartment that Kelex had acquired for our use. He'd paid for it using a bunch of shady means and money hacked from some poor warlord's Swiss account. I was sure that whoever looked into the apartment would find nothing beyond a false trail that would lead to the Late Lord Kent.
"Honey, I'm home!" I shouted once I entered the place. "Oh Kal-El, you shouldn't have," Kelex said in faux reproach as he eyed the ice cream I held in my hands with greed.
I just tossed the tub at him and watched him dig in. While I'd been unconscious, Kelex had made himself a quasi-human body of sorts. He'd done it without any orders from me, but determined it to be the best-suited form for maintaining my human disguise. I agreed; there needed to be an explanation for who had raised me all these years. I didn't agree that Kelex had needed a body, but I would allow him the independence.
After all, I'd already set a multitude of limitations on what he could and could not do to prevent me from being the one to create Ultron. Ultron with Kryptonian tech was a nightmare that I was willing to do a lot to ensure couldn't come into fruition.
Kelex's new body was modeled after Idris Elba's to a large extent. He'd changed the appearance a bit, opting for a full head of hair and a clean-shaven face to differentiate himself from the Asgardian who watched over the entire galaxy with his all-seeing eyes. It was a handsome body. Not as handsome as the one I'd been blessed with, but who could compare to Superman? Not many people. I stared at the mirror as I walked towards the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. I looked just like Superboy from the Young Justice show - well-defined cheekbones and jaw, along with sharp blue eyes and silky black hair. Unlike any version of Superman or Superboy I'd ever seen, I opted to wear my hair long. It reached down to my shoulders when I let it down, but for now, I had it tied up in a top knot.
"How are my applications coming in?" I asked as I chugged down bottle after bottle.
"Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Princeton have already received your applications. I need you to look through the last of the essays before I send them to the rest of the schools on the list," Kelex said, making me nod and stretch out my hand.
He passed me a tablet, tossing it across the apartment with ease. I caught it with similar ease while staring at the body Kelex built with suspicion.
I'd chosen to challenge myself to figure out what enhancements and abilities he'd granted himself. I added unnatural coordination to the list. No human body should be able to move so efficiently while making a throw like that one.
I read through letter after letter at enhanced speeds. Part of me just wanted to return to the fortress and wait until it was time for the new semester, but I needed to be seen. I had to have some sort of real-world presence in case I ever got investigated. I wouldn't put it past S.H.I.E.L.D. getting suspicious about me in a few years, so I had to live like I was being investigated right now.
XXXXXX- September
At the end of the day, none of my fears proved fulfilled. I'd received acceptance letters from virtually all the schools I'd applied to. A mixture of my stellar grades plus the notable lack of extracurriculars being explained away by my unique family situation. I guess it wasn't every day that the bastard grandson of a noble who had been hidden away and raised in seclusion applied to your school. It was a tale fitting for a movie.
Of course, in the end, the choice was practically made for me. It was 2008, and looking around the world before me, even with the advancements from geniuses like Tony Stark, the world was still very much in the tween years of the Internet Age. Most of the software giants I'd known from my old life did not exist here. So, I saw my path to freedom.
With that said, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the practical choice. I'd sent them my acceptance email the moment they'd sent theirs to reserve my spot, and I'd spent the months since then preparing to move and live in Boston. Kelex had been able to swing us a penthouse apartment. Not really "us," more me. Kelex was curious about humanity. He wanted to experience it all. The Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Louvre. He was going to see it all with his human body, and I couldn't be happier for him. Especially since I wasn't going to be losing any of the ability to rely on him.
You see, as a Kryptonian Artificial Intelligence, Kelex was large. Very large. He could only fit some sliver of himself within the body he'd designed. He'd done the same to all the technology I'd designed for my own use in university. I'd taken a look at the tech available for purchase and simply decided that I'd probably kill myself if I was forced to rely on any of those things for longer than a few seconds. The highest-spec laptop available for sale had a noticeable lag. Spoiled by Kryptonian and 2023 Earth technology, I could not imagine turning that thing into a daily driver.
So, I chose to sacrifice some of my anonymity for comfort. A laptop, made with parts from the fortress' fabricator, was the best compromise I could make. It was substantially scaled down from what the fortress could produce, so instead of looking like it came from centuries in the future, it instead looked only a decade or two ahead of its time. A slim unibody chassis, paired with a beautiful OLED display and a custom-designed chip, made a laptop I wouldn't kill myself to use. Illogical and likely to draw unnecessary attention to me? Maybe. But what would it matter?
I walked into the parking garage and searched out my car. It was a high-end apartment, so there were more than a few luxury sports cars. Even then, finding mine was easy. The custom paint job mixed with all the subtle tech upgrades I'd given it over the months meant I'd spot it in a crowd of millions. That was without taking super vision into account.
I got in, said hi to the kernel of Kelex that had chosen to serve as the car's onboard AI computer, and set course for the school. This was to be the first official day of the new semester. My first semester at the best school in the world according to most rankings. The streets of Boston seemed sparsely occupied today, so there was more than enough space for me to enjoy the drive. An Audi R8 wasn't the absolute speediest of vehicles, but with my enhancements, we could go 0-60 in 2.5 seconds if we were really tearing it. That meant that on the streets of Boston, with so many straight lines and paths, we were practically flying down the path.
XXXXX- NOVEMBER, 2010
"Mr. Kent, are you paying attention?" the Professor asked, turning the attention of the entire class to me. Resisting the urge to facepalm, I replied, "Of course, Professor."
"Then you will have no problem coming up and finishing for us, will you?" he said, gesturing to the laptop on the podium. I turned my attention to the projected display and noted that the class was apparently working on some code. I struggled to recognize it; it was something I hadn't done before, probably something entirely academic with little practical purpose behind it. Luckily, that's what I had Kelex for. My laptop released a whine at a frequency only I could hear, and I walked to the professor's laptop before typing in the last dozen lines of code with no delay.
I left him astounded, and the rest of the class dumbstruck. I clicked run, and the code ran perfectly on the first try. I turned to the professor and bowed, but he only scowled at me.
"Back to your seat, Mr. Kent," he said, "And I better not catch you not paying attention again. Outside these walls, you might be some sort of hotshot, but in here, you're mine." Professor Wilson was a jackass. His was pretty much the only class I attended consistently because of his outdated reliance on things like attendance marks that made up a good 20% of the grading for the class. Literally every other professor at MIT was relaxed and easy-going.
What made it even worse was that he was the one lecturer who taught a course I didn't even need to attend. He taught practical programming, and in case you couldn't tell, I was really good at it. I returned to my laptop, watching usage and data metrics for the app I just released yesterday.
At the end of my first year here, I decided that I'd saved enough to begin accomplishing my own goals. One benefit of living so close to MIT was that there were legions of lawyers ready to help enterprising students start up companies and all that stuff. Not that I actually needed one with Kelex at my back, but appearances needed to be met.
On the 31st July 2009, Future Industries was born, and our first product, Instashare, was released. Needless to say, the photo and video-sharing app I modeled after a well-known one from my first life blew up in virtually no time. A million downloads in the first week, and from there it just kept blowing up as the network effect got to work. It took us two months to get to fifty million active users, and we wasted no time in releasing a companion app, Instachat.
Instashare was a photo and video-sharing app that allowed people to take, edit, and share photos and videos all from the same app, and it even offered to host those pictures for a modest fee on the cloud. Instachat built on that to create a free messaging app that relied on people's Instashare profiles instead of phone numbers. I counted the app a success when a few months ago, I passed by a boy asking a girl for her Instashare handle instead of her phone number. Both apps were mostly free and made little money (when compared to the userbase), but that didn't matter to investors who were practically tripping over themselves to invest in the company.
I had first entertained the idea of never opening the company to investment, but that would limit the company's prospects. As long as I was sure to separate ownership and control while still maintaining my majority stake, I'd be fine. At this point, I only owned 67% of the company I created a year ago but still had 100% of the controlling shares of the company.
With Instashare and Instachat, my planned portfolio of social media apps was halfway complete. They were joined by the third app yesterday, and even more than the other two, this one was being downloaded at astronomical speeds. What was the app? A video content sharing platform that supported both long-form and short-form content while promising a revenue share with creators. It was the only app I created that was engineered to compete with an existing option. Youtube was good, but InstaTV was better.
With more efficient servers, hosting, and the fact that users could create and consume content with very few barriers to entry, InstaTv was opening Youtube's previously niche offerings for the entire world. That was one benefit of both being from the 'future' and having Kryptonian tech to act as a basis for my own. Youtube from 2023 might have put up a fight to what I was offering, but as they were now? They had not even the vaguest shot in hell.
Already at 15 million downloads after only a day on the app store, and it was clear that I was winning this social media thing.
"Mr. Kent!"
"I'm with you, Sir," I replied instantly, matching the professor's stare. He huffed before returning to his lecture.
The moment the class ended, I was the first out of the door, not paying my classmates or professor a second look. I had a meeting to get to.
One benefit of being tall and muscular was how crowds could part around you. Most faculties in MIT seemed to share lunch breaks, so the halls filled themselves very quickly. In my hurry to get to my car and out of the campus, I was fortunate that the crowds gave way once they noticed my approach. The scowl on my face might have also played a role in all that. I didn't want to take this meeting, but Kelex was sure it would be a good idea, and while I knew he was right, I still hadn't wanted to take the meeting on principle.
Tony Stark had gotten out of captivity a few months ago, and after announcing his departure from arms production and shifting to consumer goods, he then announced himself as Iron Man weeks ago. His company's stocks and reputation swung around rapidly, shifting from day to day and often hitting both extremes on the same day. If there was a person it would be wise to stay away from, it was Tony Stark and his seemingly infinite ability to generate controversy on demand. So why was I not rushing to make it in time for an appointment with the eccentric billionaire? Simply for that last word, billionaire. Tony Stark was loaded, and when he reached out through some of my investors that he was also interested in investing in the company, I practically had no choice but to take the meeting as it stood. One did not turn down Tony Stark. Kelex was able to find no less than a dozen instances where people had offended the man and found their businesses fall apart around them. A word to an investor here, an unfiltered comment in front of a reporter there, and your company was doomed.
Even with a billion-dollar valuation, Future Industries was nowhere near unassailable. Even something as simple as Stark Industries releasing their own competitors to my offerings could sink me. Kelex calculated a 43% probability that just the hype from Tony Stark releasing a social media app could generate enough interest to cannibalize the userbase of my app and the time people spend on the app as well. Pissing the man off was, consequently, very low on my list of priorities. Right below releasing a diss track aimed at the President and the Congress committee in charge of regulating companies like mine.
I got to my car and started tearing my way through
the roads, moving to the venue of the meeting, a penthouse suite in the city. The apartment wasn't too far from mine, so I wondered if Tony Stark knew where I lived. Who am I kidding? Of course he did. Fucking billionaire bastards.
When I was about to walk into the building, I was forced to pause for a few seconds as I stared right at the room containing the superhero from the outside. Oh, this fucker. I prepped myself and walked in. The doorman seemed to have been prepped to expect my arrival, so there was almost no delay between me walking in and me being guided to the elevators. I'd have expressed some shock at him recognizing me from my appearance alone, but that would have been superficial and false. After all, every news agency in this part of the country had been keen to report on the Tech billionaire who hadn't even hit his 18th birthday after my company finally hit that billion-dollar valuation. Never mind that I personally wasn't worth a billion dollars on my own. But when did pesky things like truth ever stop a journalist with a good story?
When the elevator opened, I was immediately assaulted by the sounds and appearance of an ongoing rager. Ignoring the dancing strippers, I walked straight for the billionaire who had 'requested' my presence here.
"Tony Stark," I said, tapping him on the shoulder and leaning on the bar next to him. He turned away from the trio of models surrounding him, and the smell of alcohol on him was nauseating. I'd learned to focus my senses on only my immediate vicinity to prevent me from going mad from sensory overload, but every once in a while, shit like this could catch me by surprise.
"Clark Kent!" he shouted, his voice somehow managing to spread far and wide despite the blaring music. "Welcome, welcome. Thanks for coming," he said, before grabbing a glass and passing it to me.
"I'm underage," I said, enjoying the look on his face before he slammed back the alcohol and shrugged his shoulders.
"More for me, I guess," he said after draining his own glass immediately after he did mine.
"Let's get in," he said, pulling me right away from the party and into an antechamber.
A/N: Dialogue with Stark is probably going to be a bitch and a half to write. So, I'll procrastinate it. Expect the end of Gamer's chapter 22 tomorrow evening. Ciao, kids.
A/N: Yeah, just a transitory chapter. The unfortunate bit about this is that we're very much in the set-up stage of the story, so we'll get a lot of introspection, exposition, and normy dialogue. Stick around though. Once things kick up a notch, they'll stay there for a very long time. We've got the next three chapters of this story, along with the next five chapters of another fic that I uploaded at the exact same time as this one (an OCSI into a firebender during the 100 year war in the ATLA universe) all available on pa-atreon, and you can read all of that right now just by heading to the link on my profile or searching for my username up there. Feel free to have a look.