Stark And The Spider

Voltage (Part 1)

"Thursday, bring up the holographic blueprints for my boots and belt please."

"Sure. What are you doing?"

"Well I'm allowed to sketch some blueprints by hand aren't I?" I continue to sketch on the blank piece of paper. "Nah, I'm just messing with you, it's more of a design. I'll do the actual blueprint holographically."

"What are you sketching?"

I smile to myself. "Well, every superhero needs a suit, don't they?"

I finish the final detail on my design, then look up at the holographic blueprints of my boots and belt.

I ponder for a moment, before coming up with an idea. "Thursday?"

"Yes?"

"Do you have access to my father's blueprints and videos of when he was originally making his Iron Man suit?"

"Yes."

"Can you get me access to them without him realizing?"

"I believe so."

"Please do that then." I wait a few minutes, staring at the boot holographic blueprints, and at my suit design, trying to figure out a way to combine the two.

"Videos found."

"Thanks Thursday, pull them up please."

She pulls up my dad's old test videos on a holographic screen. 

Getting up from my work desk, I walk over to settle down on my couch, bringing the screen in front of me to watch.

"Okay, let's do this right," my dad, much younger, says on the screen. I smile, remembering how long his hair used to be.

"Start mark, half a metre back in centre," he says, stepping back in large, metal boots.

I guess we both started out the same way. Boots.

He takes a deep breath. "Dum-E, look alive, you're on stand by for fire safety. U, roll it." He holds up two thingamabobs in his hands. "Okay, activate hand controls." He takes another deep breath and wiggles around, preparing himself. I can't help but laugh.

"We're gonna start up nice and easy, we're gonna see 10 percent thrust capacity to achieve lift." He braces himself, "and 3, 2, 1." As soon as he says 1, he pushes the button on his hand control and the boots propel him immediately upward in an arc, flipping him upside down and slamming him into the slanted concrete ceiling.  I cringe and cover my eyes. Dum-E sprays the fire extinguisher on him anyway.

I bite my lip, bracing myself for his next test video. "Thursday, bring up the next one."

In the second video, my dad now has flight stabilizers on his hands and arms. "Day 11, test 37, configuration 2.0, for lack of a better option, Dum-E is still on fire safety." He turns to Dum-E, "if you dose my again, and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to a city college." He turns back to face U, his other robot, who was holding the camera. "Alright, nice and easy, seriously, just gonna start off with 1 percent thrust capacity. And 3, 2, 1." At one he lifts a foot into the air, using both his boots and his flight stabilizers on his hands. Fortunately, thanks to the flight stabilizers, he is not shot backwards into the ceiling again. He drops back to the ground.

He turns towards Dum-E again. "Please don't follow me around with it either, 'cause I feel like I'm gonna catch on fire, spontaneously. Just stand down. If something happens then come in."

"Let's bring it up to 2.5. 3, 2, 1." He shoots upwards again, slightly higher than last time, and this time he starts to move around the garage.

He starts to float towards his expensive cars. "Okay, this is where I don't want to be." He starts to make weird funny noises while flying over the cars, while muttering in between, "not the car, not the car, yikes."

After flying over the cars, he starts to fly over to his work table, making papers fly everywhere. He wobbles slightly in the air making weird noises again, before saying, "could be worse, could be worse. We're fine."

Finally, he lowers himself to the ground and lands. Dum-E starts to aim the fire extinguisher at him again. "AH AH AH AH!" He yells, and Dummy sadly lowers the extinguisher.

"Yeah, I can fly," he says, and the video ends.

I smile to myself. "It's nice to see that he had to start off the same as me," I say. "Wow, clunky metal boots and hand-held controls. Now look at him, nano-tech and all sorts of other cool tricks. Look at how far he's come."

"Every expert was once a beginner," Thursday quotes.

"Thanks for those words of inspiration, Thursday." I put my pencil behind my ear as I head over to my bookshelf, and safe. I pull out my mother's old books and my own, and begin working.

"Hey, Thursday, did you manage to find the blueprints for my dad's suits?"

"Yes, I also found the blueprints for Spider-Man's suit. Would you like those as well?"

"Wait a minute, are you saying my dad designed Spider-Boy's suit?"

"Spider-Man, yes."

"Interesting." I bite my lip, deep in thought. "Yeah, pull 'em up. They'll probably be closer to what I'm going for than my dad's suit. Remember that one time he had me wear it? It was so heavy, there's no way I'll be able to fight in that."

"I remember." Thursday pulls up the blueprints of the Spider-Man suit, and I begin to look through them.

"This would be so much easier if I could look at it in real life," I mumble to myself.

"Why don't you just ask him?" Thursday asks.

"Who? My dad?"

"No, Spider-Man."

"You think he would actually let me? He seemed pretty grumpy the last time I saw him."

"He was probably just concerned you jumped off a building."

I laugh. "Yeah. He completely pulled a Peter Parker." I laugh again. "Can you imagine what would've happened it Peter actually was there?" I whistle out. "That's a scary thought."

"He cares about you."

"Yeah, I know. I care about him too."

I examine the Spider-Man suit blueprints for a bit longer before sighing. "Yeah, I really need to see this in person."

I put my mother's work books back in the safe and close the holographic blueprints.

I pass my dad as I throw on my coat and sneakers.

"(Y/n)! Put on boots! It's starting to snow!"He calls.

I sigh. "Fine." Doing as he says, I replace my white converse with my black boots and zip up my coat. "I'm going for a walk!"

"Where?"

"Around my apartment in Queens!"

"Alright!" He calls back. "Stay safe! Love you!"

"Love you too!"

I head out the door and start to make my way over to the subway.