When we finally get to the tower we stand in front of it for several moments, simply staring up at it in awe. When we finally collect ourselves we both walk into the lobby and up to the front desk.

"Uhhh, excuse me?" I say trying to get the receptionist's attention, who was very loudly gossiping with the other person at the front desk. She just continues to ignore us so I tried again.

"Miss? Uh excuse me?" I try to speak kindly.

She finally turns to us with an extremely annoyed expression. "Ughh- what do you want?" She snaps.

Geez- I thought SI was praised for their customer service and employees.

"Um, we are here for our internship." I fidget with my hands, I absolutely despise human interaction, especially when they are twats.

She raises an eyebrow while giving us a stink eye. "How old even are you?"

"16 Miss," I respond.

She scoffs. "Nice try kids, SI doesn't even hire high schoolers. Now get out of here before I call security." She then turns back to her previous conversation and ignores us again.

"Miss, I can assure you that we do have internships here. I just wanted to know if we need badges or anything and how best to get up to floor 94." I say now with a slight edge to my voice.

"Jesus, you are trying to get to floor 94? That's Mr. Stark's personal lab, do you think I am stupid or something kid?! Now get out of here or you will be banned for life."

"Miss, I promise we are supposed to be here. Can you please just at least check your computer and see if we are cleared or something?"

"Security!!!" The lady shrilly shouts and I sigh loudly.

"Oh my gods," I whisper under my breath to Peter, who now looks terrified.

Eventually, two very large security guards come over and the lady very smugly explains the situation. The security guards then grab us by our arms and start to drag us out.

"Dude seriously?? Get your hands off of me!! Can't you just call Mr. Stark or something?!" I shout at them.

"Please sir, we are going to be late!" Peter says extremely stressed.

Just as we are nearing the doors the elevator doors open and I see Mr. Stark step out. It seems several other people have as well and many people start to excitedly whisper.

"There you kids are! How are you late on your first day?" He asks jokingly but seems to not take note of the guards that have their grimy mitts on us.

He starts to walk up to us and when he gets closer the guards decide to speak up. "We are very sorry sir, these kids were trying to sneak in, we were just taking them out. Sorry for the disturbance."

Mr. Stark seems to finally notice their presence and for a second looks between them and us and then starts to burst out laughing.

The guards look very confused and uncomfortable and start to nervously laugh along with him even though they are very unsure what he is laughing about.

"Oh god, how did this happen?" he says in between laughs and pointing between us and the security guards.

One of the guards starts to speak up, but I cut him off before he does. "They wouldn't let us in," I grumble.

"What? But I wrote a notice telling them to let you in!" Mr. Stark says annoyed.

I look back towards the desk lady who is still too absorbed in her gossip to even notice that Mr. Stark walked into the room. "I don't think they saw..." I mutter quietly.

Mr. Stark follows my line of sight and when he sees the lady he sighs. "Hey, you! Lady!" He shouts across the room while waving in her direction. She turns and her eyes go wide and excited as she seems to finally notice Mr. Stark's presence, especially when he is talking to her. "Me?!" she shouts back. "Yes you, you're fired!" he hollers with a smile on his face.

I try to hold in my laugh at the conversation that is being shouted from opposite sides of the large lobby.

She suddenly looks confused, "What?!"

"You heard me! Get out!"

The ex-desk lady then huffs and stomps out of the building.

"And if you don't let go of these kids right now you are fired too." Mr. Stark says, turning back to the two guards.

At least they have some sense and quickly let go of our arms and I rub them from how hard they were gripping us. Mr. Stark then places a hand on each of our shoulders and pushes us toward the front desk and addresses the only other person sitting there.

"Can you make 2 Level 9 badges with access to the personal labs please?" He asks.

The guy meekly nods and soon hands us two gold-colored badges on lanyards that I and Peter then slip over our heads. When we do, Mr. Stark then continues to direct us over to the elevators.

After a semi-awkward elevator ride we make it up to level 94, and when the doors open directly to Mr. Stark's personal lab, both I and Peter gasp with our jaws laying on the floor. I am practically drooling at the sight in front of me. There is technology, tools, and machines that I had only dreamed of.

Apparently Mr. Stark finds our shock amusing and even asks the ceiling to take a picture of our faces. I am even more shell-shocked when the ceiling actually responds. At least that is until I remember reading about the AI 'FRIDAY' that is said to run the tower, I just never thought that I would actually be able to witness it!

"Alright kids, if you are done gawking, let's get to work." Mr. Stark says with a light chuckle.

He has to push us both over to a workstation on the other side of the room to stop us from running off to examine and drool all over the equipment. When he finally settles us at different workstations he looks around for a moment as if trying to find something. Eventually, his eyes land on something and he makes a triumphant explanation. Mr. Stark reaches down below a counter and pulls out 2 alarm clocks that look like they each cost about 3 grocery shopping trips for all the kids.

He walks over to our tables, but as soon as he gets there, he lifts up the alarm clocks and smashes them down on the tables, completely shattering them. I stare at him and the spot where the clocks lay shattered into hundreds of pieces horrified.

"Alright, fix them." Mr. Stark tells both me and Peter and then casually walks off to another table on the other side of the room where he starts tinkering with some of the avenger's weapons.

I and Peter turn to each other wide-eyed and shocked, but eventually, Peter just shrugs his shoulders at me and turns down to work on putting the clock back together.

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We work in silence for a long while, of course besides the ACDC blasting through the speakers that Mr. Stark decided to start playing a while ago, seeming to forget that we are here. I finished putting the clock back together a long while ago, it really was quite easy and I had lots of practice (seriously, it's quite embarrassing how many times I have completely smashed my alarm clock in protest). However, after realizing that I was bored out of my mind and had nothing else to do as Mr. Stark was still engrossed in his work and I did not want to interrupt him, I started to finally type out the AI that I have been working on, which I named RUBY (Robotic Unhinged Beneficial Youth), and once I was finished with the basics of it and got it somewhat functioning I added it to the alarm clock and then programmed it to analyze your sleep pattern throughout the night so that it will wake you at the best time in your sleep cycle so that you get the best amount of sleep while also making sure that you have enough time to get ready in time. I also may or may not have programmed it to shout insults at you if you snoozed it or did not wake up on time.

I looked over to see what Peter was working on several times, and it seems that he is also upgrading the alarm clock. Just from glancing at it and his code for a brief second, it seems that he is making it so that it will continue to get increasingly louder until you successfully solve specifically selected questions. You can also set specific questions to the ones that you want to study.

About an hour later of continuing to work on RUBY, Mr. Stark finally notices our presence again and comes over to look at what we are doing.

"Are you guys close to figuring out how to put it back together? Those ones are really finicky and-" He cuts himself off when he looks down over our shoulders to see that not only did we have the clocks perfectly assembled, but also obviously adding more onto and upgrading it.

"How did you- what are you kids doing?"

"Well, I just added some more features to it- not that it was bad before! It is an amazing alarm clock Mr. Stark Iron Man Sir! I just thought- I mean- I hope you don't mind, I just changed some things around Sir! Sorry!!" Peter blabbered out in panic.

"Woah kid, take a breath, it's ok. First off, please just call me Tony, I don't have the attention span for that and already zoned out halfway through just you addressing me. So, can you show me how you upgraded it?" Mr. Stark asks with a curious smirk.

"Oh, y-yeah sure Mr. ... Stark sir. Well I just..."

Peter then goes on to modestly explain all the improvements and functions that he made while I mostly zoned him out and continued working on RUBY.

Eventually, I am broken out of the trance that I am in by a hand landing on my shoulder. I harshly flinch when I swear that the hand feels exactly like Ms. Santina's and go into a slight panic until I quickly collect myself praying that they didn't notice. Unfortunately, it seems that Mr. Stark did, but after a slight pause, he seems to move on most likely thinking that I was just startled after being absorbed into my project.

"So kid, what are you working on?"

"Uh- well I uploaded an AI so that it can function through the alarm clock, and I also programmed it to analyze your sleep schedule throughout the night to best decide when to wake you up so you have the most effective amount of sleep while also still giving you at least the minimum amount of time you need to get ready. And a few other small, more fun features." I said sheepishly.

Mr. Stark stared at me for a bit as if he was doubting me. "You made a functioning AI?! Let me see!"

I wearily slid over the laptop to him so that he could look at the code. He looked over the code for a few minutes, his eyes growing even wider every now and then until he eventually slid the laptop back over to me.

"This- this is amazing. How long did it take you to write this?"

"Um, I have been working on it for the last week mostly in between classes and stuff." (it was actually usually during classes, but I was not going to tell him that.)

"Jesus kid, I am so glad I hired you both before someone else did."

I preened slightly under Mr. Stark's praise. However, that quickly diminished when Ms. Santina's repeated voice decided that now was the perfect moment to remind me of the idiot, worthless, attention-seeking burden that I truly am over and over cementing in my mind and drowning it. I tried to ignore it and simply accept the praise for once, but that is hard to do when the words feel like they are quite literally suffocating you. I couldn't hide from them. They were probably waiting for me back at home as well and I dreaded that. Gods, I really am weak.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───