Being a Banner [ 1 of JA ]

57

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Tony didn't tell Pepper that I was staying with them, so as I walked into the kitchen, I was headed to the dinner table where they were already eating steak when Pepper came back from down a hallway.
      "Tony, I didn't see what you—"
      As her blue eyes land on me, Pepper shrieks with happiness, jumping up and down as she runs at me with open arms. I hug her tightly as she gushed over how much I've grown.
      "You're even more beautiful!" She exclaims, which I mentally disagreed with. I take a seat at the dinner table between Dad and Tony, across from Howie. Once Pepper sets a plate of steak in front of me, she sits down with hers but looks at Tony.
      "Stop tapping your foot,"
      "That's Howie," Tony says. "He's getting better at it,"
      "He hasn't been better since he was a baby starting to walk, he tripped every time he stood up," Pepper says, stabbing a sliced green pepper with her fork.
      Howie jokingly glares at his mom. "I'm right here,"
      Dad and I laugh as Tony stands from the table.
      "Bruce is back, which means more brains in the lab, which means more projects," Tony says.
      "Kerry's back too," Pepper says.
      "Yeah," I tell Tony. "And I want a nice family dinner where my favorite uncle and I have a nice chat,"
      Tony sits back down and rolls his eyes. "Whatever," he jokingly sighs. "How's school?—Hey! How's that boy you like?"
      I look to Dad with wide eyes, who glares at Tony.
      "What part of 'act like you don't know,' don't you understand?" Dad asks him.
      "I like getting to the point," Tony retort. He then looks at me and places his hand under his chin and smiles. "Is Jack dreamy?"
      "His name is Jax, and. . .I'm not sure where we're at right now," I say. "We've only had one date,"
      "Wait!" Howie shouts. "I thought you were only friends with him! That's what Bruce said!"
      "Dad!" I shriek and laugh.
      Dad covers his eyes as he laughs. And we stay laughing and retelling stories and new ones. Howie had great college stories about drunk students coming in and half his engineering class being hungover.
      I wanted to stay like this forever: a nice family, talking, laughing, telling stories and poking fun at each other. But it ended as Dad and Tony had half a steak to go and scattered pepper slices over their plates as they stood from their chairs.
      "Enough family time, we've got work to do," Tony smiles at Dad. I catch Dad give me a quick glance, but as I look to him, Dad stands up from the table with Tony and their plates. Looking down at my plate, I push my food around until I decide to stab it with my fork and eat again.
"Bye guys," Pepper laughs. I can see Tony wink and smile at her before he and Dad are out of sight.
"You good?" Howie asks, hitting my elbow. I jump and sit up straighter, eating my food again. Nodding, I catch Pepper looking over at us, a nervous smile on her face.
"What was that?" she asks.
"Nothing," I tell her. "I'm good,"
There's silence between the three of us, which was odd. I look up to see Pepper and Howie staring at me.
"What?"
"Well, Bruce left the room, and now you're sad," Howie says, chewing on steak.
"Does he take time off work?" Pepper asks.
I nod. "He did for a week before everything blew up,"
"Anything before that?"
I shake my head.
"So. . .he's never relaxed before then?" Howie asks.
"I don't know," I say sharply. "Sorry—I don't know. . ."
There's silence again until Pepper clears her throat and wears a bright smile.
"Howie, go show Kerry what you've been working on," she folds her hands up on the table.
"I've only been touching it up," Howie replies.
"I know that, but it's been a few years and I'm sure she'd like to know what you've been up to," Pepper smiles again, and suddenly Howie nods and turns to me with a smile.
"Yeah! Come follow me!"
"Do I really want to?"
"You'll like this!" Howie shouts as he's already out of the room.
      He leads me out from the kitchen, and we end up in the elevator. Howie eagerly presses a button and we go down a couple floors. He smiles at me on the way down like a kid in a candy shop. When the doors open, I realize it's a workshop.
      "Hello, Howie," Jarvis greets as Howie enters the room. I follow behind, marveling at the little robots and blinking blue lights illuminating the room.
      "Hello, Kerry," Jarvis greets.
      "Hey Jarvis. . ." I say as I spin around in awe. "You've got your own space!" I turn to Howie who nods and claps his hands.
      "Yeah! Had it for a few years now." He smirks at me with excitement. "Wanna see what I'm working on?"
      I eagerly nod as Howie calls to Jarvis.
      "Reveal Mark Two, please," he smiles.
      The table in front of us parts down the middle, and lifting from the ground is another table with Howie's flying metal suit, but instead it was grey, like he hasn't added a color yet.
      "You changed it's color," I say, approaching the table.
      Howie chuckles, "No, I haven't painted it yet."
      I nod and smile, taking a good look at the suit.
      "It'd look nice being black and silver, something daunting."
      "Yeah, but I wanna stick like dad's: red and gold." Howie explains, picking up a piece of the leg that hasn't been attached yet. I think about what he just said.
      "What do you mean 'like dad's?' Tony doesn't have one," I laugh.
      Howie pauses, then shakes his head. "He had plans for this one time, but passed them onto me. He didn't have time to build this."
      I take another good look at the suit again. "What do you call it?"
      Howie smiles. "Iron Son."
      "That sounds like a superhero's name." I smile.
      Howie nods and chuckles. "It's a goal of mine now, to be a hero,"
I look down to the middle of the chest plate, where I see a big hole the size of my fist.
"Whatcha gonna do there?" I ask him. "Looks like it's broken."
"That's where the arc-reactor goes." Howie says. When he sees my confused expression he clicks his tongue. "An arc-reactor is a power source that uses electrical cells to put power into machines. Dad has a big one in the basement that powers the whole tower,"
      "How come I've never heard of this?"
      Howie shrugs. "I never gave too much thought to it." He then jokingly smirks and rolls his eyes. "Just the advantages of being rich."
      "Shut up," I laugh, punching his arm.
      "Ow," he laughs. "Didn't know street rats were so strong!"
      I laugh, taking one more look at the suit.
      "This street rat would like to try this on one day."

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hey y'all I'm low key embarrassed I haven't finished editing this and people are reading it but hall really seem to enjoy it so I'm motivated to continue! :)

And I changed the name of a character btw! ;)