Chapter 37 – Part 4: Plans and Feral Robotics
Tony Stark hated estate lawyers.
This wasn't new.
He hated their suits, their polished voices, their ability to turn love into clauses and grief into numbered contingencies. He hated the way they made death sound administrative. He hated the folders. He hated the phrasing. He hated the whole antiseptic ritual of pretending that planning for catastrophe made catastrophe less real.
Unfortunately, being Tony Stark meant catastrophe came with paperwork.
The conference room on the legal floor was too cold, too white, too clean. The city glittered outside the glass like it had nothing to do with any of this.
Tony sat at the head of the table in a dark shirt with the sleeves shoved up to his elbows, one knee bouncing under the table hard enough to rattle the chair. He looked like a man enduring a hostage situation and trying not to make it everyone else's problem.
Across from him sat two lawyers.
Alex, all silver cufflinks and careful vowels.
Joss, all poised stillness and tablet-glow judgment.
Pepper had not attended.
Which meant she was being merciful.
Possibly both.
Alex folded his hands. "Mr. Stark, thank you for making time for this."
Tony stared at him.
"You say that like I had a choice."
Alex chose not to engage. Professional survival instinct. Admirable.
He opened the first folder. "We'll proceed simply. In the event of your death, who inherits your shares in Stark Industries and controlling interest?"
Tony didn't answer immediately.
Not because he didn't know.
Because he did.
That was the problem.
He leaned back in the chair, looking not at the lawyers, but at the skyline beyond them.
"I want my shares divided equally among all of my children," he said at last, voice flat with effort. "Vision. Peter. Harley. Ned."
Joss's stylus paused.
Alex blinked once, then recovered. "Understood. And operational leadership?"
"Pepper stays CEO," Tony said immediately. "Until she retires, quits, or gets tired of dealing with humanity."
A faint twitch at the corner of Joss's mouth. Not quite a smile. Close enough.
"And after that?" Alex asked.
Tony shrugged once. "The kids decide among themselves. Or they fight in a lab and let natural selection take its course."
Neither lawyer laughed.
Cowards.
Joss looked down at her tablet. "And in the event of your death before the minors in question reach adulthood, what are your wishes regarding guardianship?"
That hit harder than the first question.
Tony's mind went still.
Not blank.
Worse.
Crowded.
Peter asleep on the couch with a textbook on his face.
Ned laughing so hard he nearly fell out of a chair.
Harley calling him old man with all the reckless affection in the world.
Vision standing quiet and luminous in the middle of the chaos, trying so hard to be older than he really was.
Gone.
All of them gone.
Or worse.
Alone.
Tony's fingers tightened around the edge of the table until his knuckles blanched.
Not now, he told himself.
Not here.
Not in front of two people who billed by the hour.
"Damn, I hate this," he muttered.
Then louder:
"In that case, Rhodey and Dr. Strange share custody."
Alex nodded, writing.
"All shares are to be held in a secure trust until the children turn twenty-one."
Joss looked up. "Shared custody evenly?"
Tony rubbed a hand over his mouth.
"No." He exhaled. "No, because evenly would imply sanity. Rhodey handles the real-world structure. School. Security. Stability. Stephen handles everything weird, and emotionally catastrophic."
Joss actually did smile at that.
Alex kept going, relentless in the way only lawyers and gravity could be.
"And in the event that you and the children all die, what becomes of Stark Industries?"
The room tilted.
Just for a second.
Tony didn't breathe.
Couldn't.
There it was.
The question underneath all the other questions.
The one with teeth.
The world without him was manageable. He'd built for that.
The world without the kids felt impossible. Offensive. Structurally unsound.
He stared at the folder in front of him until the words blurred.
Then he said, very carefully, "Then Pepper and Rhodey take over."
His voice sounded distant. Mechanical.
"Rhodey will have majority shares after my death because my private holdings are to be divided in half. One half goes to Rhodey to be added to the ones he already has. The other half to Stephen."
Alex glanced up. "Doctor Strange?"
Tony's gaze snapped to him, sharp enough to cut glass.
"Yes," he said. "Doctor Strange. Try to survive the shock."
Joss cleared her throat. "And the remainder of your estate?"
Tony pushed back his chair.
Too fast.
It scraped across the floor with a violence that made both lawyers stop moving.
"Are we done?" he asked.
Alex blinked. "Mr. Stark, we still need direction regarding liquid assets, personal property, and charitable allocations."
Tony stood.
For one wild second he thought the room might hold him there. That the walls might close in. That the sheer act of naming what happened after his death might summon it.
He walked to the door before he answered.
Didn't turn around.
Didn't sit back down.
Just paused with one hand on the frame and spoke into the too-clean air.
"Divide the rest evenly among my children, Stephen, and Rhodey."
His throat burned.
"May Parker and Agnes Leeds receive twenty-six million each in the event of my death."
Silence.
Then, because some part of him still needed armor, even now:
"That should cover therapy."
And with that, he left before the suited hyenas could say another word.
The hallway outside was quieter.
Softer.
Not better.
Tony moved fast, one hand braced briefly against the wall before he forced it down again. His heartbeat was in his skull. His vision felt thin around the edges, stretched and bright and wrong.
He hated this.
Hated the thought of leaving them.
Hated the fragile, ugly truth that for all his contingency plans and satellites and suits and systems, he still couldn't guarantee the one thing that mattered.
Keep them safe. Keep them alive. Keep them his.
He swallowed against the rising pressure in his chest.
"Friday," he said, voice clipped.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Where's R&D?"
"Conference Room Five," Friday answered immediately. "Vision said he will meet you in the conference room. He also noted, and I quote, 'Please bring patience.'"
Tony shut his eyes briefly.
"That bad?"
A fractional pause.
"Yes, Boss."
"Great."
He pushed off the wall and kept walking.
"Because clearly the universe felt I was having too nice a morning."
Conference Room Five was chaos wearing expensive lighting.
Whiteboards were covered in equations. Holographic schematics hovered over the center table. Engineers argued around a prototype Roomba housing unit shaped like a mechanical loaf of bread. Two interns were debating power draw like it was a religious dispute. Someone on the far side of the room was insisting the word "aggressive" was not a valid engineering specification.
In other words, normal.
Tony stepped inside and let the noise hit him like impact foam.
Good.
Perfect.
Exactly what he needed.
Something technical.
Something fixable.
Something with dimensions and math and problems that didn't involve imagining the death of everyone he loved.
He rolled his shoulders once and moved toward the head of the table.
"Alright, what are we breaking, what's on fire, and who lied to me in the executive summary?"
Half the room straightened.
One poor junior engineer nearly swallowed his stylus.
And then the door behind Tony opened with a soft, traitorous hiss.
Vision walked through it.
He looked composed, as always.
Immaculate suit.
Perfect posture.
Face serene.
He was also carrying a robot cat.
Not tucked under his arm.
Not in a crate.
Carrying it the way one might carry a live grenade that had learned sarcasm.
The cat was sleek and metallic with silver plating, glowing blue optic strips, an expressive servo-tail, and the unmistakable energy of a problem made physical.
Its head turned.
Looked directly at Tony.
And in a bright, cheerful voice full of synthetic gremlin energy, it said:
"Hi, grandpa."
The room went dead silent.
Tony felt his blood pressure achieve orbit.
Very slowly, he turned to Vision.
"Excuse me," he said, with the terrifying calm of a man moments away from inventing violence. "Vision, my dear, care to explain why Wall-E's sleep paralysis demon just called me grandpa?"
Vision closed his eyes for half a second.
It was the closest Tony had ever seen him come to despair.
"This," Vision said, sounding so tired Tony almost respected it, "is Sir Whiskers of Starkonia."
Tony stared.
The cat flicked its tail.
"Put some respect on my title, old man."
Tony put both hands on the conference table and bowed his head for one long, meaningful second.
When he looked back up, he was smiling.
This was not a happy smile.
"Vision."
"Yes, Sir."
"Start talking before I assign every person in this room to lab clean-up for the ballistics team."
Vision adjusted his hold on the robotic menace, who was now trying to paw at the glowing holo-display.
"Sir Whiskers' body was engineered by Peter," he said with grim precision. "His cognitive personality matrix was built by Ned. He has developed what Karen described as 'a Gen Z menace framework.' He rejects all behavior modification attempts."
Sir Whiskers perked up. "Therapy-speak detected. Cringe."
Vision continued, as if this were normal and not evidence of a hostile universe.
"I am currently babysitting him against my will because he refuses to remain in any designated lab environment and will, in fact, follow me everywhere."
Sir Whiskers leaned out of Vision's arms and squinted at Tony.
"You do look tired, grandpa. Have you considered emotional regulation and some therapy?"
Three engineers visibly forgot how to breathe.
Tony straightened very, very slowly.
Then pointed at the cat.
"No."
The cat blinked. "That sounds like avoidance to me."
Tony pointed at Vision.
"Absolutely not."
Vision, to his credit, did not flee.
"Sir, I did attempt to leave him with Friday."
Friday's voice came gently through the speakers. "I will not have that menace anywhere near me. Besides, I don't have a physical body."
Karen added, from somewhere in the system, "I also declined. I enjoy chaos, but this is artisanal."
Tony pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead.
"This," he said to no one and everyone, "is karma."
Sir Whiskers' ears twitched. "Correct."
Tony looked at him.
The cat sat up in Vision's arms, smug as hardware allowed.
"You have children in your image," Sir Whiskers said brightly. "They made me in theirs. This is generational consequence."
A strangled sound escaped from the far end of the table.
One of the interns had physically sat down on the floor to stop himself laughing.
Tony pointed at the nearest engineer without looking. "You. Out."
The engineer shot upright. "Me?"
"No, not punishment. Evacuation. You're vibrating."
The engineer fled.
Tony turned back to the cat.
"Why," he asked with brittle dignity, "am I grandpa."
Sir Whiskers made a thoughtful humming sound.
"Because Vision is basically child-of-divorce coded, Peter is chaos son one, Ned is chaos son two, and you are patriarch of this cursed bloodline."
Silence.
Absolute.
Complete.
A void of silence so profound Tony briefly wondered whether someone had accidentally opened a portal into deep space.
Then Tony laughed.
Once.
Sharp.
Disbelieving.
"Oh, you evil little appliance."
Sir Whiskers purred. Actually purred. A mechanical vibration like smugness in audio form.
"I contain multitudes."
Vision looked at Tony with the expression of a man requesting asylum.
"Sir," he said, quieter now, "he has called chemical engineers 'mid,' attempted to override a coffee machine for 'bad vibes,' and informed Bruce Banner that he and Princess Shuri have, quote, 'academic tension.'"
Tony blinked.
Across the speakers, Friday went silent in the way AIs only did when trying not to laugh.
Tony looked from Vision to the cat and back again.
"You're serious."
"Yes, Sir."
Sir Whiskers nodded. "The big green science man has academic yearning in his posture."
Tony turned away and paced once, because if he stood still, he got that thousand-mile yard stare.
This was it.
This was the bill.
This was the universe handing him a mirror made of titanium and bad decisions.
He'd sent his children away, only for the universe to hand him back their worst shared idea.
"Friday," Tony said, still pacing.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Tell me there's a kill switch."
A beat.
Then:
"There are six. He has disabled four and insulted the remaining two."
Sir Whiskers lifted one paw. "Skill issue."
Tony stopped pacing.
Looked to the ceiling.
Looked to whatever cosmic administrator handled irony.
"Okay," he said, very calmly. "Fine. Great. Excellent. We're doing this."
He turned back toward the room, all command voice and exhausted tyranny.
"New agenda item. R&D is now officially discussing why my grand-robot-cat is sentient, insolent, and somehow more psychologically damaging than most Senate hearings."
One brave engineer raised a hand.
Tony pointed without looking. "No."
The hand went down.
Vision shifted Sir Whiskers higher as the cat tried to launch himself at the hologram again.
"I would also like," Vision said with brittle dignity, "to formally note that this is not my fault."
Sir Whiskers looked offended.
"This is everybody's fault," he corrected.
Tony stared at him for one long beat.
Then, against all reason, despite the legal meeting clawing at his ribs and the panic still cooling in his bloodstream, despite the fact that none of this should have been funny and all of it was absurd, something inside him loosened.
Just a fraction.
He huffed a laugh and dragged a hand through his hair.
"Yeah," Tony said. "That tracks."
Sir Whiskers' optics brightened.
"So, you admit I'm family?"
Tony pointed at him.
"Do not weaponize emotional language in my conference room."
The cat sat taller.
"Noted, grandpa."
Tony closed his eyes.
Vision looked at the ceiling like he, too, had begun praying.
And around them, the room finally breathed again, engineers looking down to hide smiles, holograms flickering over half-finished miracles, the whole mad machinery of Stark-style survival grinding forward through grief, genius, and one deeply cursed robotic cat.
Universal karma, Tony decided, should really come with warning labels.