Kenna Stark

XV

"So what do you think?" Kenna was practically bouncing on her toes, she had her hands clasped behind her back and as big a smile on her face and she could muster.

"What do I think?" Tony asked, he looked around the room. They were in his lab, his suit on display, in the middle of being repaired when Kenna had walked in twenty minutes ago. "I think it's an amazing idea." Kenna's smile grew a little and she ran to hug him. "You are going to make one hell of a scientist."

"Thank you," their hug was interrupted when Bruce walked in.

"Morning Starks," he smiled a little, then saw their faces. "What's got you two in such a good mood?"

Kenna pulled herself up so she was sitting on the counter and Tony went back to finding whatever it was he was looking for when she came in. "Dad is going to help me get into college to study Biochemistry." Kenna grinned.

"That's amazing," Bruce gave her a one armed hug while she was still sitting on the counter, "if you need anything, you know where I am." He began to walk to his own lab before turning back with a smile, "and stay away from gamma radiation." Then he disappeared through the door.

"You want to help me with this?" Tony said, pointing towards the suit with a spanner. Kenna nodded, "great, I need a way to..."

Kenna stayed in the lab all day. She helped Tony do all sorts of things. She had planned on meeting Lillian and Christie for lunch but she texted and told them to have a day just the two of them. They had been shopping in the morning.

When the suit was repaired she sat back on the counter smiling. "Is that it done?"

"I think so," Tony came and leaned on the counter beside her. He folded his arms and looked at the suit. "You know I didn't want to be right."

"You just had to ruin it, didn't you." Kenna's smile fell in an instant.

"I'm sorry, I just wanted you to know that." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

"You didn't need to tell me," she started, leaning her head on his shoulder, "I already knew." They sat like that for a few moments. "Can I see the DNA experiment?"

"You want to?"

"I'm a scientist, I don't let anything get in the way of an experiment." She replied, jumping down from the counter.

"Fair enough, Jarvis pull up the results for the DNA comparison." Three sets of DNA and blood profiles appeared in front of them. One she recognised from every biology textbook she had ever read.

"That ones Pepper's." She said, pointing at the far right one. "Plasma, red and white blood cells, platelets. Everything you would expect from a humans blood make up."

"Okay, now the one in the middle, what's different?" When Bruce saw the three profiles through the wall he wandered through to see what she said.

"It has all the same, except, there are twice as many platelets and white blood cells," she said, reaching out her hands to zoom in on the swirling picture before her."

"And what might that suggest?" Bruce asked, moving to stand next to Tony.

"Platelets clot the blood, when you cut yourself, the platelets clot it to stop the bleeding." She zoomed the picture back out again and studied the full image, "white blood cells fight off infections. Having twice as many as a regular human would suggest this subject would heal quicker and is less prone to illness." She spun around to see both men smiling at her.

"Keep going, what about the third one?" Tony asked and she turned back around.

"The third subject," she gasped a little, "their blood is like subject two, with doubled platelets and white blood cells. They're not human, but their blood is different still from subject two. It's- it's- the red blood cells. The red blood cells from both subject one and subject two look like you would expect them to. Little disks with dips in them. Subject three's red blood cells are shaped differently." She zoomed in on one until she could see it properly. Before her eyes spun a disk, just like the others', but it was different, it had crystal looking spikes protruding from it. "It looks almost... frozen." The next words that left her mouth could have been mouthed they were so quiet. "Frost Giant." She breathed.