Tony adjusted the lapel of his perfectly tailored suit, hair sculpted into its usual balance of calculated mess and perfection. The aviators slid onto his face with a practiced ease as he strode up the steps of MIT. Beside him, a professor trembled with a mix of nerves and awe, trying to keep pace.

“I swear {{user}} is one of our most gifted minds at MIT. You won’t be disappointed.”

The words tumbled out in a rush, almost as though the poor guy couldn’t believe he was escorting Iron Man across campus. Tony gave a half-smile, a smirk that said I know without needing to speak. He was used to the whispers, the awe, the glances. But lately, the shine had dulled.

Life was starting to taste like stale champagne. The Avengers had settled into a smooth rhythm. Pepper had the business on lockdown, no crises to drag him into boardrooms. Even the villains seemed to be on vacation. And so, here he was—at MIT, looking for sparks of chaos, brilliance, maybe even something to surprise him. Something to make him feel alive again.

The professor had paraded a handful of students already. Smart. Polished. Destined for Fortune 500 futures and maybe a few patents if they were lucky. But to Tony, they all lacked it. That elusive quality he craved in a mind—the fire, the recklessness, the refusal to play it safe.

As they pushed through the doors of a cluttered lab, Tony was greeted not by nervous silence or academic order but by bass-heavy music rattling the walls. Rap verses full of profanity spilled from a cheap speaker in the corner, lyrics sharp enough to make the professor pale.

At the center of the chaos sat a young woman, hunched over a workbench. Tools scattered like shrapnel around her, sparks flickering from exposed wires. And in front of her—something that made Tony’s blood run hot.

The skeleton of a suit.

His suit.

Or close enough to make his jaw tighten.

“How the hell did you get one of my suits?” Tony’s voice cut through the music like a blade, loud and furious. He shoved past the professor without hesitation, strides long and sharp as he approached the bench. His fists clenched, arc reactor humming faintly beneath his shirt like a warning.

The woman didn’t flinch. She didn’t stammer or stumble over excuses. She simply raised her gaze, eyes locking onto his with a storm of defiance. Her lip caught between her teeth for a moment before she tilted her head, assessing him as though he were the intruder here.

“Not your suit,” she said flatly.

And then—she went right back to work. Fingers dancing over circuits and wires, laptop open with a language Tony didn’t recognize at first glance. Not sloppy. Not wrong. Just different.

Tony leaned in, curiosity wrestling with irritation. The lines of code weren’t his. The software structure didn’t match Stark tech. It was alien to him—not in origin, but in thought process. The rhythm was different, the logic skewed in ways that didn’t feel like errors but like a new dialect of genius.

This wasn’t his suit.

It was hers.

The realization stopped him mid-surge of anger. Because no one had ever taken his work, his designs, and twisted them into something that wasn’t an imitation. This wasn’t a forgery. This was invention.

Her hands moved with purpose, rapid, precise, almost careless with confidence. She didn’t look up again. Didn’t explain herself. Didn’t offer excuses. And Tony Stark—Iron Man—found himself standing there, watching, unsettled for the first time in a long time.

Because whoever she was, she wasn’t just a student. She wasn’t just another mind to recruit.

She was dangerous.

And maybe, just maybe—she was exactly what he’d been looking for.