Who:Ed and Virgil What:School tour to Stark Industries When:Backdated to September Where:Said stark industries Warnings:None STATUS: FIN
One of Ed’s new teachers seemed to have taken an interest in the boy, a chemistry teacher whom Ed had already corrected more than once on his experiments and it was only the second week of school. It was a different experience for him, most of the teachers he corrected got all butt hurt about being corrected by someone younger than them-but this one seemed to have done the opposite. This one took an active interested in Edward’s academic life, asked him all kinds of questions about the future and what he wanted from it; to be honest Ed wasn’t sure.However apparently Dr. Nordstrom had a few connections at Stark Industries and suggested the boy take a tour
Why in the hell would Ed pass up the opportunity to see the most state of the art science building? That would just be stupid. He accepted the teacher's advice and got himself a visitor pass at sign in. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was supposed to go, so obviously a littl look around wouldn’t hurt anyone right?
He slipped right past security-sometimes being small did have it’s advantages. They didn’t even seem to notice, though it wouldn’t have mattered since he did have a pass anyway. Ed spent most of his time looking up at various aspects of the building.
Working at Stark Industries really was like a dream come true for Virgil, and he was grateful for the opportunity every day. Kids like him didn’t often have the chance to do what he was doing now, and he wasn’t going to disappoint his Moms and Pops or Mr. Stark if he could help it.
But Stark Industries was also surprisingly chill, which Virgil hadn’t really been expecting. So when he saw Ed, he knew that no one would be too upset if he took a bit of a break to say hi to him. Which was lucky, because he was kind of curious about what Ed was doing there. “Ed, my man! S’up? What you doing here?” he asked, jogging a little so he could catch up with the shorter boy.
The last thing he’d expected was to know anyone at a place like this, or for anyone to know him really either. He’d been reaching out to touch a small glowing orb on someone’s desk when he recognized the voice behind him. “Virgil?’ he didn’t know the guy very well, but he did at least remember his name, he hoped anyway. “Tour. Teacher thought I needed direction or something” He said with a shrug and pointed at the visitor badge he wore. “Guess he’s not wrong, but it’s still lame being singled out” Ed shrugged, he was the youngest in the class though so it happened a lot.
“You probably should’ve gone for the directions,” Virgil said, winking, fairly sure that Ed hadn’t meant actual directions. But Virgil glanced at the orb on someone’s desk. He wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but he was pretty sure Ed shouldn’t be touching it. Especially if no one else was around at the time. “It’s a big place. Pretty easy to get lost. If you wanted, I could give you a tour.”
Ed rolled his eyes at the pun, really though. But it still earned Virgil a smirk. When Ed’s fingers neared said orb it seemed to react to him and he was entertained by it. “Not anything dangerous, just a trick of light.” He remarked in amusement out loud in attempt to get the worried look off of Virgil’s face, it was basically just someone’s desk decoration after all. He could tell exactly what it was made of now once he was close enough to it. Of course knowing that in the beginning would have been even more helpful, but he was far too distracted to be paying much attention to anything but big shiny tech.
“Yeah? If I’m not getting in the way I mean….though I wouldn’t mind getting lost in a place like this I think.”
“Still, s’not cool to touch other people’s things even if they’re not dangerous,” Virgil admonished, sounding more like his father than he had intended to. He smiled at the teen to show that he wasn’t there to scold him. “You wouldn’t be in the way at all. C’mon. I can start by showing you what I’m working on.” That way he could also let his supervisor know that he was going to be giving a tour as well.
“You didn’t touch anything your first day here that you probably weren’t supposed to?” Ed gave him a slight roll of his eyes but brushed it off easy enough and shrugged, he’d move on if that was it. He wasn’t too offended, mostly just disbelieving. He wanted to touch everything in there. How could anyone not? The shorter blond nodded as he stuck his hands in his pockets for now to keep from earning another scolding.
“I sure didn’t,” Virgil said. He’d thought about it. Stark had all kinds of cool toys that Virgil couldn’t wait to get his fingers on, but he knew better than to test his luck. The last thing he needed was to give them an excuse to fire the handsy new intern. “Though I don’t blame ya for wanting to. All this tech is tight. You thinkin’ of interning here?”
Ed gave him a look of disbelief “Well that’s no fun.” He didn’t seem to make the connection between firing and touching all the things, but then again he’d also never really had a job. Sure he’d done some work at the flower shop-but never a real job like this. “Maybe, I duno yet. I don’t really know what I wanna do except that it’s gotta be science related.” He shrugged and glanced up at Virgil curiously. “What do you do here? They don’t make you get coffee or anything stupid like that as an intern do they?”
“You can’t go wrong with science related.” He frowned. “Well, so long as you’ve got a decent boss.” Stark was one of the good ones. He didn’t know what he’d do if he’d wound up interning for a man like Alva from his dreams. He’d probably quit. He wanted to make the world a better place, not a more dangerous one. “I mean, I sometimes gotta get coffee, but I don’t mind so much. Right now we’re working on solar technologies.” Mostly making solar panels, which wasn’t that interesting. He’d been making DIY solar panels since high school. “Y’know, trying to find ways to increase efficiency and all that.”
“Hmm” Ed contemplated as he followed Virgil around. Science career was definitely in his future, but he wasn’t sure what component. “Definitely a switch than what dream me is used to what dream me is used to doing with science... “ His alchemy was mainly used for the military rather than to help society. The military was helpful but in far more violent ways than he expected….”This place looks like some kind of sci-fi movie I swear.” Ed shook his head as they passed a few various desks on the way back to Virgil’s own space.
“Isn’t it dope?” Virgil asked, grinning widely. He had thought the same thing when he’d first started working at Stark, though he was getting used to the science fiction of it all now. “Stark’s real cutting edge. They lead the industry in clean energy,” he said. Maybe he sounded like some kind of commercial, but he was really proud of the work he’d been doing, even if it was grunt work.
“...Yeah, dope.” Ed responded as he tried the word out for himself. Making a face about how the word sounded on his lips. Wasn’t for him, but he was impressed nonetheless. He felt small in that huge intimidating building, Most of what Ed had been doing with Alchemy was destructive, he’d never really thought about putting it to use like this. “Doubt this place takes on many teenagers does it?” Sometimes being a kid sucked. Especially when he didn’t feel much like one.
There was nothing quite as sad as the sound of someone trying out slang when they didn’t really believe in it, but he managed to mostly avoid cringing at the sound of the word in Ed’s mouth. “It don’t take on many high school students, but I you’re already doing the college thing there’s no reason why they wouldn’t consider taking you in as an intern,” he said. Then he frowned. “Though maybe don’t quote me on that. I’m not in charge of hiring.”
The blond nodded a bit. “I dunno what I wanna do yet, but maybe I’ll ask and find out anyway. Keep my options open I guess.” He still had most of his life to figure out exactly what it was he wanted, but this was a good step in the right direction. “I’m guessing Stark is the one to ask about that?”
“If you can meet with him.” Virgil himself had only met the man once, and that had been by accident in the breakroom. He’d submitted his resume electronically, had been hired by someone who did hiring, and then had started without ever meeting the man in charge. “Though, if anyone can get you a spot on the team, he can.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Ed was pretty impressed by Stark Industries obviously and the things that Virgil was working on but he wasn’t sure he was committed to it. “Thanks. I guess that was one of the things I should have thought through when I decided to skip ahead to college..” He scratched at the back of his neck awkwardly as he tried to think of what exactly he wanted in the future, it was no easy choice. He’d never really had much of one growing up. The future wasn’t something he’d put much emphasis on.
“Naw man, I think it’s bangin’ that you got to skip ahead.” It wasn’t even a thought that had crossed Virgil’s mind. Despite having a fairly high GPA, Virgil wasn’t even sure if he was smart enough to have jumped ahead more than a semester. But even if he could, the extra couple years to save for college had really helped, scholarships aside. “I mean, by my senior year high school wasn’t so bad,” most of the people who’d made it hard had either dropped out or been shipped off to juvie, “But it woulda been nice to cut out early.”
That caused a slender smile to creep into his face at the compliment. He was starting to think he was in over his head or being stupid for doing it, but coming from another science guy it was sort of reassuring. “It took a few months of testing and various forms of it but so far it’s worth it. College is a different world...Nobody picking on me for being smart and there are some guys that are smarter than me. I’m not even the first, but they fight for rank.” It was something that drove him to do even better. He was in the top five percent, but he wanted to beat those other kids ahead of him. It made him better. Quicker.
“Oh yeah, people actually appreciate brains in college.” He could understand that. His community college back home had been less judgemental of the smart kids too, but even there there were the people who were just there because they thought they had to be who sneered at Virgil when he seemed to have all the answers. But since moving to California, he hadn’t experienced that nearly as often. “CalTech’s the same. Everyone’s smart there. Sometimes I don’t really feel like I belong there.” Not that he wasn’t smart, but his intelligence paled in comparison to a lot of the other students there, and he had to work a lot harder than he ever had in school before, only to get grades back that were lower than the high marks he’d recieved back home. “It’s great though, isn’t it? Being able to have conversations with people who don’t look at you like you’re speaking Greek.”
“Bit weird not being first though I’ll admit.” He said with a small frown. Maybe one day he’d get up there, but there were just some little life things he didn’t seem to understand. That part was frustrating, it was supposed t obe science. “Yeah? I didn’t even look at them. I just picked the ones I could get to by bus since I still live at home. I wasn’t even old enough to get a job until recently so UCI seemed like the best choice for now.” Curious golden eyes glanced up at Virgil. “Really? That bad?” Ed couldn’t help but laugh at that one. “Yeah, considering before the only one who understood was my kid brother it’s a change for sure.” He and Al were pretty different too when it came to it. Al liked a lot of pop culture stuff, whereas Ed was more particular. Ed had his head buried in science books and alchemy more than whatever new video game was coming out. “At least he got 90 percent of my lame jokes though.” He mused. At some point he’d have to show Virgil some of the terrible science puns he often sent at random when they got thought of. “But it’s different, having an adult to talk to who actually understands what I’m saying and doesn’t just appease me.. That part got annoying sometimes. Nobody really on the same level..I nearly got sent to the loony bin for disproving a chemistry teacher once in high school.”
Virgil had to rely on public transit to get to CalTech too, but it was a long commute. At least, it had been before his powers had come in. Now he just flew to school. It was still a long flight, but it didn’t take nearly as long. While he’d been pretty drained the first couple of times he’d made the trip, now it was as easy as pi.
“Seems like a lotta people on the Network go to UCI,” Virgil said. He’d talked to a few of them, and had even managed to stop by the campus a couple of times to meet with people. “You like it there? And science geeks have the best jokes,” Virgil said, flashing a grin at Ed. Puns that could go on for days.
“So far yeah. My girlfriend goes too.” Ed leaned against a near by desk and nodded. “Yeah, I corrected a teacher once already but they didn’t threaten me in return. There was actually a class discussion. I got credit for knowing more about chemistry than he did without him looking down on me. I worked my ass off for it, but still.” Ed wasn’t a natural brain, but he worked hard. He spent much of his free time even reading for fun. “Only thing I hate so far is getting stuck in the back if I’m late and being short. I can’t see if it happens.” He made a slightly annoyed noise at that as he wrinkled his nose at the memory of such a class. One of his few that wasn’t auditorium shaped and had too many tall adults for it’s own good. “You know it.” He returned that grin, slang he wasn’t good at but oh the puns could go on for days.
“Raven, right?” Virgil asked. He’d rather liked Raven the couple of times they’d spent time together, even if she was a little dour sometimes. “But that’s awesome man. Profs are usually pretty good about taking that kind of thing,” he said.
He nodded his head. “C’mon. There’s this dope project they’re working on upstairs that they sometimes let me peek in on. I’ll show you.”