Your Little Stark

Ch•9- Robot Man

     "Day 11, test 37, configuration 2.0. For lack of a better option, Dummy is still on fire safety. If you douse me again, and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to a city college" Dad said sternly to the little robot dummy. Dummy lowered his fire extinguisher to the floor embarrassingly.

      Dad had on the chest piece with wires that connected to his metal arm gloves. On his feet were two metal looking boots. His armor was almost halfway done by now. Today, he was practicing another flight test and I had the privilege to watch up close and personal. I sat on the stool, leaning my elbows on the table, and silently waited for him to start.

    "All right, nice and easy. Seriously, just gonna start off with 1% thrust capacity. And three, two, one" His hands and feet that were covered with metal gloves sparked to life. White fiery energy blew out from them, sending him in the air by a couple feet up. He sharply moved his arms around in the air to keep him balanced. Dad hovered a few feet in the air above the ground before landing back on his feet. He seemed very proud of himself.
"Okay, not bad huh?" He asked me. I shook my head, very impressed with his work.

     Beside him, Dummy followed closely with the fire extinguisher "Please don't follow me around with it, either, 'cause I feel like I'm gonna catch on fire spontaneously. Just stand down! lf something happens, then come in, And again, let's bring it up to 2.5. Three, two, one" the gloves and boots jumped to life once more, slightly more powerful than the last time.

      He hovered higher this time and started to drift over the sports cars in the corner of the garage "Okay, this is where I don't want to be! Not the car, not the car! Yikes! Table!" The papers on the table that I sat at fluttered all around the area, messing up everything. I put my hands up to protect my face from the flying objects. Dad better not land on me.

     He managed to use the hand controls to steer and land safely back where he started on the floor "Could be worse! Could be worse! We're fine! Okay. How was that Jes?" He looked to me.

I brushed the papers out of the way "Nice my dude"

    "No! Ah ah ah!" Dad yelled to Dummy as he pointed the extinguisher at him, ready to spray him. The dummy lowers his handle sadly to the floor "Yeah" Dad looked around the room "I can fly, I think tonight I'm going to try a real flight test. Outside"

     "Outside?" I echoed "Like a real life 'flying around the city' type of test? With no extinguishers if you catch on fire?!" I raised an eyebrow, glancing over at Dummy who held the red can.

    "Very funny, I'll remember that the next time you want something" I shrugged "anyway, I finished the suit design while you were away at school" he stripped off the robot limbs, placing them on the table next to his coffee "Look familiar?" He pointed to the full-sized suit that laid on the counter. It wasn't put together, put the parts laid close to each other to resembled the finale form. The suit was a stainless steel color, it was smaller in size and weight from his original suit.

    "Yeah. It does" I smiled. Dad held up a loose leaf sheet of paper with a drawing on it, my drawing. It was the one I was doodling in class before my teacher snatched it away from me and stuffed it in her desk drawer "how'd you get that?"

     "Your teacher tells me everything you do. It's weird, she told me that she's a HUGE fan of me" he quoted the word 'fan' with his fingers "anyway, she sent me this the other day. I was impressed, slightly, and I sorta used the drawing to design the mark 2" I felt a small rush of blush go in to my cheeks. He actually used my picture as a model for his suit. So basically I designed the suit!

                                        ***

     Pepper strolled in through the front door up to me. I was sprawled out on the couch, playing video games on the PlayStation "Good evening Jessi, I brought some Chinese for you and your father" she set the food on the coffee table in front of me "Where is Tony?"

     I kept my eyes on the TV screen, shooting the enemies with my expert video game skills, lol I'm kidding I'm missing everything. If anything I'm shooting my own team members "He's down stairs, working on his project" I twisted the remote to the side, making a grunting noise. The other team was shooting at me and I had to escape.

"Ugh. Hasn't he been down there all day?" She asked, rubbing her hand over her eyes.

    "Basically Yeah" I paused my game and stretched "He did a mini flight test today. It was cool"

"He let you down in his workshop?"

I smiled "I know right?"

     Pepper wiped a strand of her red hair out of her eyes "Well, I need to scoot, do you need anything?"

     "No" I picked up the box of Chinese, taking it to the kitchen table "Thank you Pepper!" She left, leaving me and the food by ourselves. I skipped down the stairs back to Dads workshop to tell him about the food. When I got there, my feet stopped me at the door.
Dad stood in the middle of the garage in front of his sports cars.

     At least I believe it was him because he had the FULL SUIT ON "Whoa!" I practically yelled at the top of my lungs. I punched in the passcode to the door and ran in. Dad was mumbling something to Jarvis inside his suit, I didn't hear what he was saying. His body was covered head to toe with the shiny silver suit. His eyes glowed white. He was looking around the room, analyzing it with the suit itself.

      My eyes were glued to the silver suit that fitted around his body. This was the strangest and coolest thing that I've ever seen. I leaned against one of the columns out of sight behind him. Dad straighten out his legs, flipping out his palms so they were pointed at the ground.

     "3, 2, 1" He counted before the Suit jumped to life once more, propelling him in to the air. His suit kept him levitating above the tiled floor. My mind had been blown past the point of no return. Dad angled is body at the runway that led outside to the circle driveway. A second later, he blasted off out of the room through the opening. I sprinted after him, running through the tunnel. Lights from the tunnel flashed against my body.

     I kept running until I reached the end of the tunnel. The cool air hit me, blowing my brunette hair behind me. I looked up to the fading globe of light that was disappearing in the dark sky. He circled around over the moonlit water before hightailing it towards the city. I watched in complete awe, not moving from that spot for a whole 5 minutes. Dad had created an actual working flying suit. He was legit a flying Robot man, and I was the witness. I'm the daughter of the flying robot man.