Tony, Leo, and Sharon

[om_catseye]

Sharon brings Leo home to meet Tony. Leo and Tony play with tech.



Sharon didn't often take friends home for the weekend, but she wanted to introduce Leo to Tony and his workshop. She explained that Tony had really cool tech in the city as well as spare room to crash, and also warned Tony they were coming. Once they arrived she dragged Leo downstairs.

"Tony?" She called. "Brought mechanical friend." Upon spotting Tony she bounded over and hugged him. "Hi." A loving nuzzle. "This is Leo. He made cool things for me. We can keep him."

"Hi," Tony said, sounding more than a little bemused, though he threw an arm around her anyway. "We can, can we?" It did at least occur to him to glance over at the new kid to see what he thought, but Sharon did have a way of getting people to agree with her. It was probably the cat thing.

Leo hadn't been quite sure just why Sharon had decided he'd won a free trip to New York and a tour of a high tech workshop, but he wasn't about to argue. Hot girl inviting him somewhere? Cool! Why not? Besides, Sharon was fun. He was in favor of fun.

So it was with a somewhat bemused grin that he shrugged his shoulders, well aware that he made something of a comic figure in his beat-up army jacket and in the company of a girl who had to be half a foot taller than he was. "Hey, I'm totally up for being kept. Though I'm pretty sure I don't get a choice in the matter." Sharon, after all, was kind of a force of nature. But he really hadn't seen any reason to protest.

Sharon smiled. "See? Smart."

​Tony huffed an amused snort and patted her back even as he held his free hand out to the new kid. "Hi," he said easily. "Tony Stark. Welcome to the madhouse."​

"Another madhouse?" Leo feigned astonishment as he took and shook Tony's hand. "I thought we came here to escape the madhouse." He directed a mock-accusing (and very unconvincing) look in Sharon's direction. "Didn't you promise a total lack of madness? I'm pretty sure - whoa, what's that?" he asked as he caught sight of...well, something moving off its own accord behind Sharon.

​"That's just Dummy," Tony said without looking, as the bot lifted it's arm as if in response to his name and pointed his camera in their direction. "He can be safely ignored unless he's got a fire extinguisher to hand." Tony paused. "He doesn't, does he?"​

Sharon glanced over. "Nothing's on fire. And this isn't madness. Is totally normal," said the cat.

"No fires." Leo's attention was completely fixed on Dummy, to the extent that he probably wouldn't have noticed if there were fires or not. "He's awesome." Camera - well, yeah, camera. Perfect thing for optics. Obviously responsive to audio as well - reception only? He wasn't seeing a sign of speakers, but that didn't mean they weren't there. With some kind of built in logic circuits if he was able to determine the need for a fire extinguisher...oooh yeah. That was a nice piece of work. "Yours?" he said asked Tony, eyes still following the robots movements with fascination.

​"Early project," Tony agreed with a grin. He knew that kind of expression. "Dummy, c'mere," he called, and the robot agreeably wheeled his way over, his main arm leaning over Tony's shoulder to point his camera at Leo almost curiously.

Sharon smiled and made room for the boys to play with robots. She knew where this sort of encounter led. Fortunately, she'd taken a page from Steve and tucked a sketchpad downstairs by the couch. She sat down and made herself comfortable while they talked science things.

​Leo didn't even notice Sharon moving as found himself face to camera with the robot. "Hey Dummy. Except you're not, are you? Pretty smart, actually." Wheels - well, that was practical. And sure, there were the audio receptors, and... "Just how much do you understand?" His fingers twitched in his pocket, toying with his screwdriver. Not that he was going to use it - messing with other people's stuff was seriously uncool - but that didn't keep him from wanting to.

​Tony snorted a little at the assertion ​​​that the little idiot was misnamed, but the absent way he patted the bot's main strut said a lot about how fond he was of the bucket of bolts. "Figure somewhere between toddler and smart dog," Tony said. "He was supposed to be a lab assistant, but well. He's not the greatest at it."​

"Oh come on, this guy is awesome!" Leo protested without bothering to look over at Tony. Instead, he was grinning broadly and leaning from one side to the other to watch the robot track his movements. "You said he can find the fire extinguisher - if he can do that and hand off tools, he's a whole lot smarter than most elementary school kids I know. And less chatty. Does he talk?" At that, he finally looked away from the robot, curious as to whether or not the older guy had included any kind of vocorder.

​"No voice protocols," Tony said with a slight shake of his head. ​"He's just the hands. Or hand. You want conversation, you need JARVIS for that."

"What's a JARVIS?" Leo asked immediately, only half listening for a response as he circled around to get a better look at Dummy from the back. Chatty, so far as he was concerned, was overrated. His last foster brother had kept talking whenever he was making something, and had gotten pissed when he didn't answer. But seriously, who had time to talk when they were working, anyway? "Can I open him up?" he asked hopefully.

​"I'd prefer if you didn't," Tony said dryly, and even Dummy backed up a little, shifting with something that might almost be called wariness. Though hey, the kid got points for asking first, at least. "And JARVIS is JARVIS. Say hi."

"Hello," the AI put in promptly, if somewhat amused sounding.​

Leo threw up his hands, all innocence, as Dummy backed away. "Whoa. I wouldn't have done it without asking you first, too. Very uncool." His attention was drawn to the disembodied voice, however, and his eyebrows climbed up under messy bangs as he grinned. "Hi Jarvis? How's it hanging?"

​"Metaphorically well, thank you" JARVIS returned, both polite and dry. ​

"AI," Tony said, one side of his mouth lifted. "He runs the workshop. Well, and the building."

"Your building is run by an AI," Leo repeated, finally pulling his eyes away from Dummy entirely. "What kind of place is this?" Because yeeaaaah. Normal apartment buildings weren't run by AIs, last he heard. They should be, obviously, but they weren't. He'd lived in enough of them to know.

On the other hand? They didn't usually have robotic lab assistants, either. Or labs.

Tony flashed him a wide grin. "Mine," he said, gesturing expansively with both arms. "I rewired it."

Leo grinned back just as broadly, and said the first thing that came to mind. Which, really, wasn't the only thing that came to mind, but hey, why ask a million questions when one would do? "Show me?"

"Show you what," Tony said with a laugh, "the wiring?"

"I'm good with the wiring! Wiring is awesome. Or, y'know, whatever." Leo grinned a little self-consciously and held out his hands in a "what can you do?" gesture, not even realizing his left hand still held the screwdriver he'd been fiddling with in his pocket. "Kid in a candy store, man. Sorry."

"Fair enough," Tony said and shrugged. Nerds, man. He got it. "JARVIS, gimme the building," he added, and a bright wireframe holograph of the building itself flickered into life in front of him, the wiring picking itself out in a different color.

"Whooooa!" Leo jumped back a little as a see-through model of the building appeared right in front of him, then, if anything, grinned even bigger. "Oh man, alright. Forget the candy store. Pretty sure this has to be the afterlife." His eyes, however, immediately began tracing the wiring system in question. Which was...alright, even if those were just standard data lines (and he wasn't believing that for a minute) there wasn't anything this JARVIS wasn't connected to. "Capacity?" he asked aloud, not even bothering to give it a context.

"People or information?" Tony absently grabbed one corner of the building a pulled, setting the hole image to spin lazily.

"Information," Leo countered, pretty much forgetting that people even existed, craning his head to as different things caught his attention. "JARVIS, can you throw in the electrical systems, too? Maybe in a different color?" Because omg, this was awesome.

"As much as I need," Tony said as a third color obligingly began threading into the image.

"So what, are you like some millionaire tech god?" Leo asked as he reached out, finger tracing the power systems as they appeared.

"Yes," Tony said with obvious amusement. "Exactly."

Engrossed in following the probable flow of power throughout the building, it took a moment before that sank in. Once it did, however, Leo blinked and looked back at Tony. "Seriously? Who are you again?"

"Tony Stark," he said again, patiently, and wiggled his fingers in a kind of wave. "Hiya."

"Tony Stark? You mean, the Tony Stark?" Leo feigned looking astonished, then grinned, just a little sheepishly. "I'm guessing that means I should have known you're a millionaire tech god, right?"

"Well, I don't know about should, but people do seem to." Tony shrugged a little. "To answer the question you're probably going to ask next, I run an engineering company."

"Oh yeah? Cool." Running an engineering company being of less interest than the schematic still hanging in mid air before him, Leo turned back to it instead. "So, you've got JARVIS housed here" he muttered, more to himself than Tony and making a guess based on the power systems, "and the lab, and...apartments upstairs?" Sure, had to be. Less power expenditure, less redundancy... well, plus he was pretty sure Sharon had mentioned something about that.

One of Tony's eyebrows lifted slightly, but he just smiled. "Amongst other things. Guest rooms on two, apartments on three and four."

"Makes sense." Leo absently nodded approval. Living spaces upstairs, check. As someone who'd grown up above his mom's garage, that sounded ideal. He continued eyeing the schematics, trying to reason out this and that, then finally pulled his attention back to Tony and grinned. "Sorry. Way cool place."

"Believe me," Tony said with a faint smile, "I get it."

Leo glanced over at Dummy, at the JARVIS-generated schematics, then back at Tony. And grinned broader. Yeah, he did, didn't he? "So, what kind of offerings do you give millionaire tech gods to get the grand tour?" Because yeah. The lab hadn't exactly escaped his attention. He'd just been trying really hard not to look.

Tony made a show of considering it, though it didn't do much to hide the smile lurking in the corners of his mouth. "Well the cat likes you," he said, tipping his head towards the snickering girl on the couch, "so I suppose we can waive the offerings."

"Hey, offering transferal? I can work with that." He glanced over at Sharon and grinned. "I've got the new version of the Ultimate Cat Toy almost ready for beta-testing anyway."

"See, useful," Sharon said, grinning up over her sketch pad.

"Cat toy?" Tony echoed with amusement, even as he shot Sharon a look. Yeah, he could see why she'd claimed him.

"Cat toy," Leo confirmed, grinning smugly. He set down his backpack and pulled out the newest version, which bore little resemblance to his original throw-together job. This one had a fuzzy covering that hid the internal clockwork, and whiskers that hid bits of motion detectors scavanged from people's discarded Halloween decorations (and, okay, a couple he'd "borrowed" after they'd broken down the haunted house, but hey, they'd had tons!). "It's still having some trouble gauging distance," he admitted as he handed it over to Tony to see. "I really need to get my hands on a Roomba, but people just don't throw them out."

"Huh," Tony said almost absently as he turned the mouse over in his hands, feeling for the inner bits. Wasn't polite to take other people's things apart. "Well if you tell me what you need I can get it for you."

Leo gave Tony a curious look, then shrugged. Why not? If the guy was a millionaire tech god (which seriously, still mind-blowing), he probably had spare bits and pieces lying around all over the place. Grinning, he started ticking things off on his fingers. "Circuitry designed for things that detect motion, like those gizmos they put in Wii's. Optics, the smaller the better. AA batteries. Metal, preferably scraps, if you've got them lying around?" Leo's grin tilted and he shrugged. "Pretty much anything. Except hair ties; Jubes gave me a ton of those, and they burn up too quick. The barrettes were awesome, though."

"I've probably got most of that hanging around," Tony said with a thoughtful hum, turning to eye his workbench, "and anything I don't, I can get. Want me to throw something together for you, or you want to do it yourself?"

"Myself," Leo replied without hesitation. Realizing only belatedly that refusing might have been rude, he shrugged and offered a crooked grin. "If you don't mind if I use your workbench?"

Tony tipped his head, eyes flicking quickly over his workspace. There was nothing particularly sensitive lying around, but still. "I'll clear you a space."