prompt for April 22nd - from The Perfect Peacetime Weapon (Iron Man/Real Genius)
The beginning of this idea lives over here; having watched both films again since having the idea, I'm revisiting it briefly.
Prompt for April 22:
1) a phone call; C) a locked door
The good news is, Tony's got his first call-back from the offers he sent out. Well, from the offers Potts sent out on his behalf, working from the list Jarvis compiled.
The bad news is, the guy's not sure at all about the prospect of working for Stark Industries, and Tony honestly can't blame him for a little uncertainty.
Their personalities are about as polar-opposite as you can get, and there's fifteen or twenty years between them - it's hard to tell, with Pacific Tech, but in any case the guy was in college when Tony was just having his first good poke at computers. They're pretty well-matched in the brains department, from the looks of things, but he'd expect that of anyone on Jarvis' list. Pacific Tech doesn't take academic slouches.
But the thing is, Tony remembers this name. Sure, he was five or so at the time, but he remembers hearing about the guy, remembers all the advances in weapons technology his dad threw together (or had people throw together) using a brainy college kid's research, even vaguely remembers hearing that the guy cracked and dropped out - all of which got confirmed on the phone.
It eats at him the rest of the day, and when Tony gets home, he goes straight to his workshop and says, "Jarvis, why didn't you tell me Holyfeld was on that damn list?"
"You didn't ask, sir."
This is true enough, especially since Jarvis refused to cede the list until after Tony slept, and he barely glanced at it the next morning before handing it off to Potts. He feels like an idiot for doing that now, of course, even though that won't really help matters.
"Still. There's no way he was in school at the time I asked for. If he had been, he wouldn't have re-enrolled in a place that burned him that badly a decade beforehand."
"He was not attending the college at the time, sir," Jarvis says, unruffled as ever. "However, some official records indicated he lived in one of the dormitories until May of 1985. Given that and his previous record, I suspected he may have been involved in Dr. Hathaway's removal from the institution, and therefore could be worth contacting."
"Fair enough, I guess-- wait. He was still living in a dorm? And no one noticed?"
"Pacific Technical Institute's dormitories tend to have exceptionally large networks of steam tunnels, sir. Anyone who shared his access point certainly would have been aware of his presence, though it seems no one thought him worrisome enough to inform campus authorities."
Tony sighs. "Well, I'm hardly one to criticize a reclusive genius. You think he's going to be worth talking around? He called the office earlier, but he's really not sold on the idea yet."
"If he were involved in Dr. Hathaway's dismissal, sir, it was hardly in defense of his own work. There is a possibility he realized where the Crossbow project was headed before the students who built its components did."
"Sounds like a yes to me. It'll be tricky, but I might be able to come up with something." Tony sure as hell hopes he can, anyway. He's going to need a perspective like Holyfeld's if he wants to do this above-board thing right.
Prompt for April 22:
1) a phone call; C) a locked door
The good news is, Tony's got his first call-back from the offers he sent out. Well, from the offers Potts sent out on his behalf, working from the list Jarvis compiled.
The bad news is, the guy's not sure at all about the prospect of working for Stark Industries, and Tony honestly can't blame him for a little uncertainty.
Their personalities are about as polar-opposite as you can get, and there's fifteen or twenty years between them - it's hard to tell, with Pacific Tech, but in any case the guy was in college when Tony was just having his first good poke at computers. They're pretty well-matched in the brains department, from the looks of things, but he'd expect that of anyone on Jarvis' list. Pacific Tech doesn't take academic slouches.
But the thing is, Tony remembers this name. Sure, he was five or so at the time, but he remembers hearing about the guy, remembers all the advances in weapons technology his dad threw together (or had people throw together) using a brainy college kid's research, even vaguely remembers hearing that the guy cracked and dropped out - all of which got confirmed on the phone.
It eats at him the rest of the day, and when Tony gets home, he goes straight to his workshop and says, "Jarvis, why didn't you tell me Holyfeld was on that damn list?"
"You didn't ask, sir."
This is true enough, especially since Jarvis refused to cede the list until after Tony slept, and he barely glanced at it the next morning before handing it off to Potts. He feels like an idiot for doing that now, of course, even though that won't really help matters.
"Still. There's no way he was in school at the time I asked for. If he had been, he wouldn't have re-enrolled in a place that burned him that badly a decade beforehand."
"He was not attending the college at the time, sir," Jarvis says, unruffled as ever. "However, some official records indicated he lived in one of the dormitories until May of 1985. Given that and his previous record, I suspected he may have been involved in Dr. Hathaway's removal from the institution, and therefore could be worth contacting."
"Fair enough, I guess-- wait. He was still living in a dorm? And no one noticed?"
"Pacific Technical Institute's dormitories tend to have exceptionally large networks of steam tunnels, sir. Anyone who shared his access point certainly would have been aware of his presence, though it seems no one thought him worrisome enough to inform campus authorities."
Tony sighs. "Well, I'm hardly one to criticize a reclusive genius. You think he's going to be worth talking around? He called the office earlier, but he's really not sold on the idea yet."
"If he were involved in Dr. Hathaway's dismissal, sir, it was hardly in defense of his own work. There is a possibility he realized where the Crossbow project was headed before the students who built its components did."
"Sounds like a yes to me. It'll be tricky, but I might be able to come up with something." Tony sure as hell hopes he can, anyway. He's going to need a perspective like Holyfeld's if he wants to do this above-board thing right.