Odd Things To Happen At Work #4

Odd Things To Happen At Work #4

At work on Saturday night, a guy came up to the bar, and I had to do a double take.  He looked a lot like Jeremy Renner.  And he was standing on front of my till.

I was so ok with that.

(Barely) Controlled Chaos #4

Part number 4 is up :)

Warnings for this part: none

November 1991, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Two months into life at MIT, and Tony was finally settling in.  His dorm-mates still pretended he didn’t exist, unless they were busy stealing his stuff because ‘he’s the rich guy’s kid; he can afford it’, but his professors had acclimatised to the idea that their youngest student was more proficient in most of their areas of expertise than they were, and everyone in the robotics lab was in awe of him.  He was no longer invisible to everyone, and that was a hell of a step up from his home life; he was almost sociable, and that was not a word that anyone had ever attributed to him.  Tony didn’t do social well.

Maybe that was why he still didn’t have any friends.  Tony was used to being ignored by humans, but now he was out of his father’s house, he had planned on breaking Howard’s principal rule and finding a Pokémon to keep him company.  All of his dorm-mates had Pokémon, and several people in his classes had their Pokémon escort them.  One of the professors had a Teddiursa who sat on the desk at the front of the lecture hall and made the least threatening growling noises Tony had ever heard at anybody who walked in late.  Tony was certain that several of the girls were late on purpose, just so they could coo at the little bear.

So, yeah, it was fair to say that Tony had anticipated finding a Pokémon that could stand his company.  From what he could tell, the creatures tended not to care what a person’s IQ was, or how old they were; if they liked you, they stayed with you, and Tony wanted that.

There were several wild Pokémon around campus as well as the ones following various students and lecturers around; mostly they were bird-types, but the odd Rattata could be found in dark corners and sometimes Sentret wandered onto the grounds.  Tony had hoped that, maybe, one of them would take a shine to him, and he made a habit of sitting on a bench in an area where a lot of the Pokémon congregated, throwing crumbs to the birds so that they would hop close to him.  They took the food, but none ever seemed interested in the person feeding them.

Maybe Howard was right, and he’d have to buy his friends.  He should just give up and go buy a dog.

One more day.  He’d try for one more day.  The pet store would still be there in the morning.

***

Tony was – once again – sitting alone on one of the benches scattered around campus, eating the remains of last night’s pizza for lunch and throwing crumbs at the birds that gathered around him.  Two of his dorm-mates walked passed without looking at him, let alone offering to join him.  He sighed and threw the crust onto the ground, where two Pidgey started fighting over it.  One more day.  It had become a mantra by now.  One more day.  One more…

“You shouldn’t encourage them.”

Tony jerked and turned to see who had spoken; behind him stood a tall black student that he remembered seeing around campus.  Seeing that he wasn’t about to be punched (it hadn’t happened yet, but he thought it probably would at some point), Tony shrugged and turned back to the birds.

“Not doing any harm.”

The student was silent for a minute, then the bench to Tony’s left creaked and he was sitting there, holding out a hand.  “James Rhodes.”

Tony blinked and took the hand slowly, waiting for the punch line.  He was the youngest, smartest person at this university, and that meant apparently that nobody talked to him.  Well, no one except the grad students in the robotics lab, who were constantly asking for his advice, and that was a recent development.  It wasn’t until they’d seen Dummy that any of them took him the slightest bit seriously.  That, at least, had gone according to plan.

So, this?  Unprecedented.  Tony’s mind flicked back to his last conversation with Howard, and he flinched.  This Rhodes character wanted something.

“What do you want?” he asked, because he was sick of people in general and had no patience for any more games at his expense.  Rhodes blinked and let go of Tony’s hand.

“…To talk to you?”  he said, uncertainly.  Tony snorted and tore the corner off his pizza, throwing it and watching as a Taillow caught it in mid-air.

“So talk.”

There was a beat of silence, then Rhodes spoke again, judgement in his tone.  “You’re not very friendly.”

“Neither is anyone else,” Tony said, brutally honest as he watched the blue Pokémon dive and twist in the air, waiting for more food.  “Get used to it.”

Rhodes sighed and reached into a bag at his feet, pulling a sandwich out of it and peeling off the crusts.  He threw them to the Taillow, who caught them and took off into a nearby tree to eat them.  Tony sighed and threw the last of his food to the bickering Pidgey.

“I’m Tony.  Stark.”

Rhodes smiled at him.

Iron Man 3 | *NEW* Official Trailer 

SELPA

the avengers | harry potter au  (disclaimer: that has nothing to do with Harry Potter himself)

Steve is a Muggleborn wizard who left the wizarding world after finishing his NEWTs in order to fulfill a promise to his family. Bruce is a professor in Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts with a monstrous secret. Natasha, a Ministry spy, has a past, and it’s not a pretty one. Clint is an Auror who finds himself neck-deep in trouble when he uncovers a conspiracy against the Ministry. Tony is a rich and eccentric tinkerer who finds himself drawn to dabbling in the Dark Arts. Thor and his brother Loki are both descendants of a noble pureblooded family. The uneasy truce between the brothers is broken when Thor discovers that Loki has returned to his Death Eater ways.

I opened Internet Explorer this morning, and Google had a very nice birthday message waiting for me.  It made me very happy :)

Checklist for character development.

Created by myself, compiled from questions gleaned from several sources, and some of my own additions.