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It's the best part of the mansion, the creepy sprawl beneath it with its state-of-the-art mad science lab. Tony's down there, casually aloft upon a pair of repulsor boots. His balance is excellent. It's all in the abs, and he's in good shape for a man his age. As he hovers, he jots things down on a clipboard, likely in regards to the hovering. He's in jeans and a work shirt, his hair disheveled from a long day of experimenting with things man wasn't meant to know.
Peter has claimed a room in the mansion and filled it with changes of clothes, so although he always *enters* the mansion in his suit, when he comes downstairs he's in plainclothes. Jeans, a t-shirt, a labcoat, and protective eyewear, though that's hanging around his neck at the moment. He brings with him a… briefcase. He blinks at seeing Tony, and grins, "Hey, Mr. Stark. New model repulsors? I'd love to see a schematic for how those things work. Is there a fuel or is it an energy based system?" He is fascinated by the Suit, but a little shy about asking questions usually.
"Energy," Tony says. He taps the disk on his chest with his pencil, then finishes jotting down his last line of his note. He taps a button on a brace on his arm, and the repulsors lower him gently to the ground. He steps out of the boots and tells Peter, "I can get you the look at the schematics. At least I know you can keep a secret." He smiles, there and gone. "What's up? You look like you're ready for action."
Ooh. Schematics. But then he gives a thoughtful look at Tony's reactor, "Does it hurt, Mr. Stark?" he asks, genuine concern in his features for a moment before he goes over to the section of the lab dedicated to the Chemistry variant of Mad Science. He opens the briefcase, setting it on the counter. Inside are several vials securely held in place, and a notebook. "Though I am *curious* how the repulsors work, I don't suppose it would be practical to spend time on yet, not with pressing projects. The reactor is so not something I could explain to my aunt." He grins, "I'll have Skin#1 Mark 1 done within three days on the outside, for sure. It *feels* right, right now, unless you pay real close attention— real skin has hair of course and short of painstakingly implanting them individually, I haven't figured out a way to solve that textural issue yet. So it'll be slightly smoother then it should be. I introduced some irregularities into the polymer matrix that is the skin itself to counter that, and its… *close*."
Tony pauses to think about the question. "No," he says slowly. "Not really. Mostly there's just an awareness of the weight of it. Sometimes it itches, but if it's working like it's supposed to, it doesn't hurt." He rubs at the disc absently. Then he tosses the clipboard with his notes aside and grabs a gadget off a workbench and turns it this way and that in his hand. "Catch," he says as he tosses it toward Peter. "You'll get there. I assume you're mocking up irregularities like moles and all that fun stuff."
"I admit I'm not clear why you have it… implanted in you. I mean, obviously, it powers the suit. But you don't seem like the kind of guy to implant a machine into your body just for the Suit. Its just..extreme. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't judge, Mr. Stark. I just never knew you before it and the Suit, so…" Peter's reflexes are superhuman, and so he snatches the gadget out of the air without even really thinking about it, then peers at it curiously, "Oh yeah, I have an algorithm I worked into the skin's chemical composition itself— I thought of putting this in the extruder but really with my current knowledge I'm more of a chemist then engineer" His tone says 'for now' quite plainly. There won't be a science he doesn't know when he's done, but he's still a kid. "so, the skin expresses varying irregularities in color based on its surrounding 'tissue'. One time I even got a rather cool birthmark I _swear_ looks like Texas, though for the color-irregularities to generate such are rare."
The gadget is a sturdy wirework glove with a pale glass oval set into a titanium frame. Wires extrude from it, not encased asofyet due to the gadget's unfinished status. Still, if one were to connect them to something, the power would flow pretty easily. The thing resembles the repulsors in the gloves of Tony's suit. "It's a bit of a story," he says. "I've left the details out of the press, I guess. Not the kind of publicity I want to draw. Long story short, the first one I made saved my life, and I had to cut into myself to set it in place." He looks up. "Clever stuff," he tells Peter. "It'll be a trick getting the fibers you're using for hair fine enough." Does he know how? If so, he's not telling.
Tony's last statement causes Peter to pause, and suddenly his mind *spins* almost visibly. The kid works through several variations of an idea, "Okay, so I already have the matrix randomly creating irregularities; if I create a condition that is much lower then what would produce a color alteration, and have that chemical chain then bind to an entirely different site, there could be a uniform but still random distribution of sites where the hair-fibers are produced. Yeah, getting them the right size and stiffness is something I'll have to think about." He blinks a couple times then shakes his head, and he looks curiously at the 'glove', "Okay so this is basically a hand-mounted repulsor, I can see where it would channel. I'm a little surprised the Suit's gauntlet starts out as such a … fine construction. Is this a new model, Mr. Stark?" But after that he adds, "That must have been hard, to implant it in yourself." He pauses, "No, probably not. Not for you. You saw the necessity. And so you did it."
Tony smiles crookedly as he watches the gears in Peter's mind turning. "It's just a little something I've been playing with. The first version punched a four-inch hole in a block of ballistics gel. This one should act more like a repulsor and less like a death ray." He leans against the work bench and folds his arms. "It was a messy job," he says, "I almost killed myself before the shrapnel in my chest had a chance. There was shrapnel in my chest, I got shot and the bullet shattered. Anyway, I was dead anyway so why not give it a shot? I got lucky."
Death rays make Peter cringe, even if its moving *past* death ray status. The kid is famously unwilling to kill people. "Have you considered putting an output regulator…here?" Peter walks over towards Tony and indicates a spot in the device. Just because he doesn't consider himself an engineer doesn't mean he is ignorant of engineering. "My uncle always said we made our own luck." He's a little quiet. He mentions his uncle from time to time, but likely Stark did a background check on the kid and knows the man was murdered when he was 14 — not long before 'Spider-Man' first appeared in the papers. "Sure it might not have worked, but if you didn't try, it _definately_ wouldn't have worked. You made the possibility of survival."
Tony tilts his head as he looks over at the spot Peter indicates. "Sure, that's not a bad idea. Might be fun to play with." He's already thinking of bells and whistles, because anything cool can be made cooler. He hesitates, then gives Peter's shoulder a squeeze. Yeah, he knows what happened to the uncle, and he can only imagine what a fourteen year old kid went through taking on that much responsibility. Maybe he understands a little, at least the murdered rolemodel angle. "Yeah, well. Laying there bleeding gets old real quick. Besides, I wasn't going to let the Rusky bastards who did it win."
The squeeze makes Peter smile a bit. Its possible he soaks up any Paternal Figure Attention like a sponge. He is strong in almost every imaginable way that strong can be defined— from mind to strength to body to will— but he is not without weakness. But he nods then, "With great power comes great responsibility, and there's no power greater then the mind." Pause, "Though Noh-Varr, Chris and I recently tested our strength, and they clock in at about twenty five tons each while I can double it, so just, like, for the sake of argument, responsibility ratio …" He grins suddenly. He doesn't stay gloomy, even if he's troubled by dark thoughts. "Can't let the bad guys win, Mr. Stark. You didn't. You won. Hey, but, by the way, if you have any idea how to safely test how durable someone is to damage, I'm all ears. I've got a side-side-side project— okay I have a lot of projects— to quantify and categorize the Avengers various strengths."
Tony pats Peter's shoulder, then resumes his lean against the work bench, arms folded in relaxed repose. "I guess I'm just stubborn that way," he says. "Geez, you kids and your powers. Thank goodness I've got the tin can to keep you all in line." Yeah, because he's such a disciplinarian. His brow knits as he considers the problem. "Ramped up stress tests," he says, thinking aloud. "Unless you're talking about being impervious to bullets. My general stance on that one is wait and see, but hope you never have to find out."
"Are you telling me that you do not know *precisely* how much damage the Suit can take before it starts affecting performance?" asks Peter with an arched I-so-don't-believe-you brow, though there's a bit of a grin added, "For me, my primary defenses is I know there's an attack coming from a certain direction and of a certain severity before the person attacking has really decided to do it, so I'm just not *there* when they are shooting bullets at me. Spidey-Sense. I haven't figured out how that works scientifically yet, it has to be some kind of seriously ramped up flight-or-fight response reaction." He pauses, "General durability, I got hit by a bus once and it tore my suit but I was fine."
"I can test my suit with and without me in it," Tony points out. "I know what it can take, but the testing was low risk." He considers Peter. "You probably have a kind of hyperawareness that's so intuitive and quick that it feels almost like premonition. It bypasses your conscious mind, so you notice it before you think about it. Voila, Spidey-Sense."
"Fair point, you can test the suit withuot being in it." Peter can't help but laugh, "This is why quantifying durability is posing a problemf or me. Testing limits of what damage you can take without you know…killing someone accidentally." He shrugs helplessly, but considers Tony's hypothesis. "That's as good a theory as any I've come up with, if not better. It does seem subconscious; I react before I'm entirely consciously aware of even reacting. Speaking of if I suddenly leap and seem to be freak out, run away. I can't sense if anything is threatneing you but if we walk into a room with a bomb, if I'm suddenly throwing myself one way, that's the safest way to be."
"If you could appropriately alter ballistics gel," Tony says, "but the question becomes how do you know what consistency you need? It's easy enough to make something with the tensile strength of a human body because we already know what that is." He snorts then. "Run away? I'll suit up. But I take your meaning, maybe give you enhanced boys and girls some space." He shakes his head. Surrounded by super powers.
Peter blinks a moment, "Oh, I know my body is more durable then the human body average— easily so. Seriously, got hit by a bus." He flushes slightly, "It was sorta on purpose because I was getting this little girl out of the way." he shrugs, "But anyways, no, I'm not saying run away run *away*, give us space. I'm saying if _I'm_ suddenly fleeing a spot, don't be by that spot. If you keep track of me, that… hyperawareness? Might give you clues of what's happening."
"Way ahead of you," Tony says with a wink. Yeah, he's figured out who to keep an eye on in a crisis. "You're our canary in the mine, kid. Without all the messy dying, which suits me just fine, and I'm glad you can walk off getting hit by a bus. I bet you had no idea before you did it, either. You saw the girl in trouble and you acted." He shrugs and says, "The bottom line is, most of the people I know on this team, it wouldn't matter if they could or couldn't take it. They'd make the same call."
"It's a little girl." Peter says it automatically. Its not even a question, its not even a call. "I mean sure, if I could, I'd have snagged her in some webbing and pulled her out of the way, but it was just far enough all I could do was _just_ get there in time. At that point getting out of the way of the bus was not viable." Pause, "There was a couple people who got whiplash in the bus, unfortunately. But no one was seriously wounded." He sounds relieved, at that. "But, seriously, its a *little girl*. Anyone who wouldn't make that call I wouldn't trust to have my back, Mr. Stark, because our values are so _completely_ incompatible that I wouldn't trust them to decide at a point to try to stab ME in the back. A little girl."
Tony says, "Exactly. This team is made up of people who, whether they knew the odds or not, would do the same. Sure, it's good to know if you can take being hit by a bus, and if you can devise a safe way to test it, all the better. Bottom line, though? We're going to do it anyway. That's who we are." He glances toward the repulsor glove he'd given Peter to look at. "I know the limits of this stuff, but it wouldn't matter. You save the little girl, even if it's the last thing you do."
Peter nods with both clear conviction and satisfaction; Tony's the kind of personal hero he thought he was. There's nothing at all sketchy about Tony! "That's why I'm here, Mr. Stark. Because everyone knows you save the little girl." He looks back to his briefcase, pulling out one vial, "This is he current version, its major flaw is 'smooth as a babys butt', which the hair and irregularity codes will fix. Anyways, so… I was thinking…." And he rambles off a coherent theory of molecular bonding.