Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.
DoorMan #52
Stark Industries, LA[February 8, 2008]
–Colin Baxter–
"...and that is how you can safely call on your designated APIs with a request to both the Business team as well as the IT Team. The Business team request will be handled by your team lead who will have to justify the request, but someday you too will reach that position so really this is for your benefit as well…." He zoned out of the lecture that they were receiving.
What were these people doing anyway? Half of the interns with him were of such calibre they were probably being headhunted by the government and the other half were on their way to quitting the stupid program halfway through and starting their own stuff, same as he was.
The one thing he failed to understand was how this stupid ass program managed to get a 90% retention rate. 90% of the candidates to whom they offered a role, accepted the role. Something must have been different in their case because he couldn't see a hardcore nerd accepting a role where he had to speak with a different HR for at least 2 hours every day.
They hardly did any work, which was expected but there was nothing that should have hooked their attention. No Quantum Computer usage, no experimental chiplet designs, no Arc tours, nothing. It was as if these people didn't even care about them.
It had been 2 weeks now and he could confidently say that not just him, but most of the others were already considering leaving this place. They were just passing time for the past few days, relaxing at Stark Industries' expense but even that got stale after a while. There was no mental stimulation and without that, all nerds would lose the one thing they had in spades.
Today, it was the Business team HR who was here to give them a lecture on how and where to interact with the Business team in regards to whatever might be needed for the development team, because this was a huge corpo and they couldn't just grant every developer's requests, even though the company most definitely could afford to do that, not for long though, as the news of Tony's disappearance had already spread throughout the world and with each passing day, the chances of his recovery dimmed more and more.
After a certain amount of time, his eyes were open but his thoughts wandered elsewhere, his hand on the trackpad of the laptop, unmoving. The talk with Maya Hansen went as well as it could have.
She had a huge freakout in the beginning, what with most of her life changing as she knew it and as it turns out, she did not really know what sort of criminal elements were involved, or rather, she had put her head in the sand and pretended not to notice anything as long as she was able to continue working on Extremis.
There was a lot of crying and a lot of awkward silences but once she was settled, and he exposed her to her new reality, which was a shiny new lab along with living quarters on Mars, away from most humans, she quickly began accepting his words as gospels of truth.
It also made her very wary of him as she quickly withdrew herself from the conversation whenever he was in the vicinity, which made him enlist the help of Dr.Banner, a known face to Hansen who had followed Bruce's work before his transformation. With a fellow scientist in tow, Maya quickly began spilling the beans about what Extremis was and how it worked. He didn't pretend to understand most of what they were saying but he noted the words and researched them later on.
As it turns out, Maya somehow figured out how to tap into some extreme CHI dimension, a tainted version that promoted growth at all costs. The serum, when injected into any non sentient being would just result in cancerous growths that would then explode in a spectacular fashion.
But if the serum was given to a human, someone with a soul, the dimensional link stabilised itself by reading the needs of the body and changing the body according to that and only drawing on more energy if things were not according to the blueprint.
That soul linkage was what was missing from her serum, which resulted in imbalances that led to explosive humans. Of course, this was not something she could have known, it required knowledge of the Mystics. She just told them of the procedure and the ingredients involved, and he figured out the rest from there.
The reason they needed J.T. James' DNA was because he already had a natural soul linkage to some fire dimension, something that the CHI was tainted with. That, along with some more fine tuning of the output, would create a nearly perfected Extremis.
He naturally made sure to relay his findings to Bruce and told him that there were gaps in their knowledge because they only explored one part of science before leaving the Red Hearth because his duty called him back.
All in all, quite a nice good cop, bad cop situation was pulled off by him and Bruce with Hansen. When he mentioned that to Bruce, he just stood there for a moment, staring in the distance, as if contemplating his life's decisions.
The matter of J.T. James was taking more time because he had yet to receive the adequate equipment to create a fireproof living quarter for him. If it was delayed by two more days, he was just going to go ahead with the stick route, which is him and Jin'Ya just intimidating the man into submission, which might make some stuff tricky but in the end, all they needed from him was his genetic material, and some harmless tests, nothing more.
A problem for another time then.
"That will be all for today….." he nearly sighed in relief at the end of that lecture as all of them shuffled out of the conference hall, which was completely empty as it was probably built for hundreds of people instead of the 8 or 9 that were in the hall today.
Once that was done, he quickly bid goodbye to everyone and came back to his quarters, in a luxury MUV that was kept on campus just in case anyone needed to take a ride back to the assigned accommodations.
Once Bruce was done understanding the underlying principles from what Maya could recall, what was in the USB drive she had on her person, he was going to try to get an abridged version from Bruce and then consult either one of the Masters or the Ancient One directly about Extremis and how to stabilise the soul linkage so that further work to convert Extremis from a weapons platform to medical platform can be done.
He opened his phone as something pinged him and immediately shut it off as it showed the Stark Industries stock on a steady decline. He had been buying shares of the company as much as he could. He did not have clandestine investment networks set up yet so all of that was transparently done but he didn't need to because he had over two months to get that stuff in order.
Once Tony came back and announced the death of the Weapons division, he was going to buy so much stock, pouring all of his savings into it. Last he checked, he had about a hundred million dollars saved up, in illegal money, and a couple million in white money.
Those hundred million were going to turn into hundreds more and give him the ability to buy a shit ton of land somewhere and turn that into his Earth base.
"Thank you," He greeted the security guard at the gate who confirmed his access and then allowed him entry into the building, and then the same for the elevator as well. Security was tight in this place.
Sure, the Seattle apartment was cool and all but it was normal, nothing about it spoke lair of a superpowered magical teenager. He wanted that, and despite it being chil–
He froze for a split second at the entrance of his door and then continued as normal, locking everything, changing clothing, freshening up, and then sitting in front of his laptop. With a twitch of his finger, he was connected to the server in Kamar Taj, which now had a message from Panther Princess.
He smirked. Cute.
Opening the message, his eyes narrowed as he read the contents.
"Hmm." Once he was done reading the whole thing, he leaned back in his chair and looked up, deep in thought.
Apparently, Shuri had come up with a proposal to slowly disseminate technology, mostly medical and energy related - solar stuff– to the rest of the world through a series of non profit labs, to create a soft cushion for the inevitable crash landing Wakanda was going to have when the world came to know about their hidden country.
It was nice, very detailed, and could be done entirely by Wakanda, without any input on his side, so why did he now have a standing invitation to visit Wakanda whenever he had time to "discuss the substantial changes that Wakanda will be doing to its foreign policy"
Something told him it wasn't that simple. It did not reek of a trap because he could just bring their shield down and also rig a dead man's switch to expose their country to the world, catching them flat-footed, which Shuri knew he had the willingness to do.
Well, what was the harm in replying? Only before that….
He smirked as he replied, "Only if you agree to a visit to an even more magical place, before my visit."
There, that should be interesting.
Shutting off his laptop, he then began working on the official letter informing Ta-Lo about an impending state visit from a Princess of a foreign country.
Yes, he was informing them instead of asking for permission.
Serves that geezer right for not giving him fair compensation for the CHI Sessions.
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