Archive of Our Own

1. The very first thing that Pepper Potts learns about Buffy Summers is that Standard English is not her primary language. (That Tony is fluent in Teenager comes as no surprise to Pepper. It only seems natural that Tony should speak an obscure minor dialect of the human condition that most people forget by the time that they’re twenty-five.)

Buffy only has, like, five responsibilities as Stark’s personal assistant (and she should probably work on remembering to call him ‘Mr. Stark’ more often), one of which (keeping people from killing him) seems to falls under her sacred calling more often than not, so she is determined to do them all very well. It’s only been five hours (and Buffy is already flush with more money than she’s ever bothered to imagine), but Stark seems determined to make that as difficult as possible.

They are looking at an apartment for her, and the real estate agent, who can apparently scent a rental in the wind, is earnestly prattling at Miss Potts and pretending not to notice as Stark leans out dangerously far over the balcony to try to lob spitballs into people’s hair. Buffy isn’t sure what’s more annoying: that this guy is widely considered a national treasure or that he’s missed every single head that he’s aimed at so far.

“Stop that!” Buffy hisses as she yanks Stark back onto the balcony. Then, conscious that Miss Potts might have seen her manhandling her new boss, slants a guilty look that way. Miss Potts seems entirely interested in the real estate agent’s spiel. Feeling a tiny bit better, Buffy begin to bodily drag Stark away from the balcony’s railing and the tempting targets passing below.

The wind shifts, and although it’s only for a moment, Stark reeks. It’s so bad that Buffy nearly loses her grip on him (and her lunch.) But she’s a Slayer and made of firmer stuff, so Buffy tightens her grip on Stark’s arm and keeps going.

“I almost had it,” complains Stark, who is walking in the general direction that Buffy is pulling him, and Buffy snorts.

“You were never going to get it,” she corrects. “Your reflexes are too slow. And you didn’t account for how slow they actually are when you were hocking up your lugies.”

“Spitwads,” Stark corrects before suddenly stopping dead in his tracks. “You like physics?” he demands, delighted.

“No,” says Buffy, who has just (not) finished her junior year. She’s had a whole year to learn to like calculating velocities and accelerations, amps and ohms, and whatever else, and she passionately hates it all. Honesty (and Stark’s disbelieving expression) compels her to add, “But I’m very good at apply it.”

Stark’s face lights up with understanding, and Buffy, who has seen a variety of his bad ideas in action, braces herself.

“It’s boring in school,” he agrees. “It’s much more fun in my lab. Let’s go tell Pepper that you like physics!”

“I don’t like physics!”

But there is no use trying to argue with him because Stark is moving towards Miss Potts… and away from the balcony. Since keeping Stark from bothering Miss Potts is not on Buffy’s list of responsibilities, she is content to follow after him.

By the time that Buffy catches up to the adults, all three of them are looking at her expectantly.

“Well?” asks Miss Potts. “Do you like it?”

The apartment that they are viewing, the sixth so far that day, is nice. Like, really, really nice with hardwood floors, fireplaces, and marble countertops. It’s on the fourth floor, but there is a massive, sprawling tree handily placed near the right corner of the balcony and the outer façade of the building is rough enough that Buffy is pretty sure that she could climb up or down it in a pinch.

“How far is it from Stark’s – I mean, Mr. Stark’s house?” Buffy asks, and Stark grins.

“Only about forty miles, give or take a few miles,” says Pepper. “It won’t be a long drive.”

Buffy can’t drive, but it’ll be a manageable morning run.

“Can I afford rent?” Buffy asks, and Miss Potts nods.

“Comfortably,” Miss Potts promises.

Renting an apartment for herself seems like an enormously important decision. For a moment, Buffy waffled with indecision. But if she wants this new life, she has to have a new apartment. Buffy squares her shoulders.

“Then I like it. Can I have it?”

“Yes,” says Miss Potts. She smiles a small smile. “You can have it.”

After Miss Potts walks Buffy through renting an apartment and turning on her utilities (a process helped by Stark’s personal and written assurances to the apartment manager and the utility company that Buffy has a steady source of income), Stark issues her a Stark phone. Buffy takes a discreet sniff when Stark passes her the cell phone and catches a whiff of something unpleasant. There is something very wrong with Tony Stark.

“Hello, Miss Summers,” says Buffy’s cell phone, and Buffy yelps. She nearly drops the stupid thing. The voice continues, saying, “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“That’s JARVIS,” Stark says proudly. “He’s an A.I., and the first of his kind in the world. I programmed him myself.”

“Artificial intelligence,” Miss Potts adds at Buffy’s uncomprehending look.

“Like a killer robot?” Buffy asks suspiciously. Killer robots are her least favorite kind of robot.

“That is an ugly, ugly stereotype,” Stark avers.

“I’ve killed two,” Buffy says flatly. Off of Stark’s look, she adds, “My mom has really bad taste in men.”

Buffy thinks that Willow is still dating Oz, so it doesn’t seem fair to accuse her of bad taste too.

Stark and Miss Potts laugh like Buffy is making a joke.

Holding her cell phone up closer to her mouth, Buffy says, “So are you a good A.I. or a bad A.I.?”

“A good A.I.,” JARVIS says calmly. “I assure you that I have no aspirations to become a killer robot.”

“We’ll see. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

“I shall endeavor to prove my peaceful nature to you.”

“All shall love me and despair, huh?” asks Buffy.

“Pardon?” inquires JARVIS.

“It’s a movie quote.”

“…The Lord of the Rings?” JARVIS guesses.

“Got it in one, Tinman.”

“Wizard of Oz,” Stark declares, inserting himself into the conversation.

“No helping the A.I.,” Buffy orders, mock scowling at Stark. “It’s already a zillion times smarter than us!”

“You and JARVIS are going to be great friends,” Stark decides, looking pleased. “I can tell.”

Buffy suspects that Stark doesn’t know much about the making or keeping of friends. Very few epic friendships begin with one party accusing the other of secretly being a killer robot. But she doesn’t correct him because there are some things (like, for instance, her penchant for Slayage) that Tony Stark just doesn’t need to know about her.

On day two of Buffy’s big adventure in employment, she takes a cab to Tony’s driveway and walks the rest of the way. She wants to make a good impression on her first day of actual, full time employment.

At her orientation, which mostly seems to be memorizing the layout of Mr. Stark’s closet, learning how to make his favorite hangover remedies, and familiarizing herself with the gift bags for his one night stands, Buffy blurts, “Is this it? All I have to deal with are your clothes, hangovers, and one night stands?”

“Disappointed?”

“I thought that I’d at least have an e-mail.”

“You probably do. But JARVIS deals with that sort of stuff.”

“JARVIS?”

“Hello, Miss Summers,” says a guy’s voice from, like, everywhere, and it’s Mooch the Internet Demon all over again.

Buffy yelps, startles, and spins to look for the source. And if there’s a stake in her hand, well, she’s been places with Tony Stark before. The man is practically a demon magnet.

“Where are you?” she demands.

The short of JARVIS and Stark’s explanation is that JARVIS is not just a cell phone app. He also runs Stark’s house and helps Stark’s personal assistant with her duties. (He might also run Buffy’s new cell phone. She isn’t entirely clear on that point.) If she’s going to keep this job, Buffy is going to have to learn to work with JARVIS.

Buffy does not want to learn to work with JARVIS.

She wants to be broke and homeless even less, so Buffy stows her stake and resigns herself to knuckling under. But at the first sign of evilness, Buffy is totally going to fry Stark’s virtual butler. (She even makes a mental note to find out where Stark keeps JARVIS’ brain, just so she’s prepared for the A.I.’s practically inevitable betrayal.)

Buffy spends the rest of the day following Tony Stark around like a puppy, eyeing his life for things that are likely to kill him or with which he might kill himself. There are kind of a lot of both types of things in his lab, enough to make her nervous about leaving him in there alone at any rate.

When he starts making noises like he would like her to go away so that he can invent now, Buffy sticks around anyway to make sure that none of his lab equipment gets ideas.

“You don’t have to hang around here,” Stark tells her twice. “Pepper usually goes upstairs to work on her own things.”

“I wanna see what my boss does to earn the big bucks,” Buffy retorts. “Also, I’m vetting your little robots for murderousness.”

“Them?” snorts Stark. He casts a quick look towards the trio of little robots. Aside from the giant claw thing, they look mostly harmless and, if Buffy is being honest, kind of adorable in a weird, science-y way. “I’m not saying that it’s impossible, but if they ever killed me, it’ll be accidental.”

“Not making me feel better.”

“What is it with you and your fixation on killer robots?” demands Stark.

“I told you, I’ve already killed two of them.”

“I like a classic, but that joke’s getting old.”

Buffy just shrugs and pretends that it doesn’t matter to her that Stark is staring at her like she has lost her mind. Finally, he sighs. Flapping a hand at his car collection, he says, “Go do the cars.”

Since Buffy is pretty sure that she could make it across the length of the garage in time to rescue Stark from herself, she goes to do cars. The rows of classic cars are boring, but the motorcycle collection in the back corner of the garage is like a shiny beacon of love and joy. As helpless as a moth before a flame, Buffy goes to the motorcycles.

She admires all the sleek lines, shiny chrome, and undeniable power for awhile, before glancing over her shoulder. Stark looks busy – he is frowning at a hologram and wiggling things around with his fingers – so Buffy struggles with herself for a few minutes before tipping her head back and, feeling like a fool, says, “Hey, JARVIS?”

“Yes, Miss Summers?”

“Do people get to drive the motorcycles?”

“I’m sure that we can come to an arrangement.”

It is the first of many arrangements between her and JARVIS.

Pepper Potts is a force of nature. Inside of forty-eight hours, she has set up everything in Buffy's new life, except for high school and a car, and the only reason that Buffy doesn’t yet have a vehicle is that she put Miss Potts off with a story about wanting to shop around for the perfect, teenage dream car. (It’s true enough, but it neglects to acknowledge Buffy’s lack of permit, much less license.) And after the disasters that were Hemery and Sunnydale Highs, Buffy isn’t holding her breath on the enrollment front.

For a moment, more than one if Buffy is being honest with herself, Buffy wonders if Pepper Potts is a balance demon. She has the nearly irrepressible urge to call Sunnydale and ask Giles if balance demons have some sort of desperate yen to find particularly chaotic people and sort out their lives. It’s a theory that wouldn’t work if someone like that slimy weasel Whistler was the balance demon in question, but it might go a long way towards explaining Pepper Potts.

People like that don’t just happen.

Of course, jobs like being Tony Stark’s new P.A. don’t just happen either, especially not to people like her. She’s seventeen, a runaway, and a high school dropout. Her permanent record is probably more spots than anything else at this point.

Buffy knows that she isn’t qualified for her new job, but she is going to figure it out. She is going to be the best personal assistant that Tony Stark has ever had.

2. The second thing Pepper learns about Miss Summers is that she generates paperwork like Tony Stark generates controversy. It does not endear her to Pepper. Neither does her police record.

S.H.I.E.L.D. promised Pepper an agent to act as Tony’s bodyguard and personal assistant a week ago, and Pepper is confident that the position will be empty again by the time that the agent arrives. She is already turning over ideas for discreet methods of hiring the agent and introducing him or her to Tony.

Pepper knows that it is at best unkind to bank against the ultimate success of a seventeen year old, but she also knows that she was the first P.A. to stick it out with Tony for any length of time. There is no way that Tony could replace her inside of a week.

Eighteen hours after Tony hires Miss Summers on a whim, S.H.I.E.L.D. finally sends their agent. Natalie Rushman is young, pretty, and presumably deadly.

Tony will want her.

Ignoring the flare of pain somewhere in the region of her heart, Pepper hires Natalie Rushman into the legal department and arranges for Tony to inadvertently meet the company’s newest legal secretary. She gives precise instructions for Natalie Rushman to bring certain documents to Tony’s beach house at a particular time, specifically during one of Tony’s biweekly boxing matches with Happy.

The boxing lessons are something else that has started since Tony’s escape from the Ten Rings.

When Pepper arrives, Tony and Happy are in the ring, and Miss Summers is sitting on a folding chair nearby, alternately calling advice and encouragement to Tony and bickering with JARVIS. It has been thirty hours, and Miss Summers has not yet admitted defeat.

At the sight of the teenager, Pepper feels a twinge of conscious over helping the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to poach Miss Summers’ position out from under her. She promises her uneasy conscious that she will help Miss Summers get out of her apartment lease without consequence.

From the moment that she enters the room, Tony Stark is aware of Natalie Rushman, the bastard.

Natalie Rushman joins Pepper, and Miss Summers makes a transparent excuse to be somewhere else, perhaps sensing that her presence was neither wanted nor needed. Tony immediately joins Pepper, claiming Miss Summers vacated seat as his own, and Miss Rushman joins Happy in the ring, showcasing her skills to an appreciative Tony.

While Pepper signs paperwork and banters with Tony, Natalie Rushman easily wipes the floor with poor Happy. Pepper feels bad about using Happy to showcase Miss Rushman’s talents, but as it is ultimately for Tony’s good, she merely promises herself that she will do something nice for Happy at a later date.

Tony remarks on Natalie Rushman’s looks and her athleticism and makes a few jokes about legal, but he never shows any interest in hiring Miss Rushman away from her current post.

“I’m surprised, Tony,” Pepper murmurs, “I thought you’d want a Miss Rushman of your very own.”

He smiles. “I’ve already got a Miss Summers.”

It is a surprising amount of loyalty from a man whose shallowness is the stuff of legends and urban myths. (It took him three months to bother learning Pepper’s name! Pepper is still not certain if the time lapse was due to Tony’s general inability to keep track of it or if it just took him that long to decide that he liked her.)

Pepper’s (rather strong) reaction to Tony’s response could best be described as ambivalence. On the one hand, Pepper appreciates Tony’s lack of personal interest in Miss Rushman. It soothes that aching place in her chest. On the other hand, she discovers that she is petty enough to resent Miss Summers for foiling her carefully laid plans. S.H.I.E.L.D. has finally sent an agent, but there is no P.A. position for her. And, given that Tony’s heart runs deep, there won’t one available until Miss Summers gets sick of Tony and leaves on her own steam.

Pepper ends up hiring the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent as one of her own assistants. Miss Rushman’s new job is to pick up the slack left by Tony’s new hire. It is not what anyone hoped for when Pepper and S.H.I.E.L.D. made their original agreement but it is the best that Pepper can do under the circumstances.

Pepper’s ambivalence regarding Miss Summers solidifies into frustration when she receives her replacement’s preliminary background check.

While Buffy Summers does not have an actual police record, and there are no charges against her, past or pending, her record as a person of interest is literally as long as Pepper’s arm. Within it are accusations ranging from suspicions of breaking and entering to suspicions of arson to, most recently, suspicions of murder. Her school records, and the sheer length of her history as a 'Person of Interest' to the local police, are more than enough to make Pepper rethink Tony's hire.

If anything, those exact same things seem to cement Tony's interest in Miss Summers. Tony is openly thrilled with his new employee’s police record, reminding Pepper of the notes in Tony’s academic records. The only reason that his police record started at age twenty-one instead of twelve is because before that his father was available to smooth things over for him.

“So what’d the school gym ever do to you?” Tony asks Miss Summers during an afternoon meeting between the new CEO of Stark Industries and the company’s (majority stockholder and) most brilliant asset. It is their last strategy session before they leave for Monaco. Tony times the question so that Pepper is in the middle of swallowing when he says it.

Pepper, who is used to Tony, does not choke on her mouthful of water. She does, however, glare at him. Tony pretends not to notice.

“Is that on my permanent record?” Miss Summers demands, sounding appalled. “Because no one can prove it was me. It might have been an electrical fire! Or smoking mice!”

“Was it really smoking mice?” Tony asks solemnly.

“That’s where the smart money is,” Buffy replies equally seriously.

Tony nods like that is a perfectly reasonable explanation and Pepper squashes the urge to say something cutting and less than professional. It may be deserved but that’s not the sort of image, personal or professional, that Pepper likes to project. And it would be even further off topic. Pepper no longer has time for Tony’s digressions during work hours.

Outside of work hours are something else entirely.

The next morning, Pepper drops by Tony’s Malibu house two and a half hours before Miss Summers is scheduled to arrive for the day. She lets herself in, braces herself for whatever she will find in Tony’s bedroom, and goes upstairs to wake the boss.

He is sleeping alone, which is still surprising and still feels like a nice change even though it has been months since Pepper last found Tony with a bedmate. Tony has slept alone since Obie stole his second arc reactor from his chest and left him to die without it.

The sweatpants are new, though, and Pepper wonders if he is wearing them for his new secretary’s sake. The stab of jealousy that she feels at the thought is both irrational and unwarranted.

Pepper feels it anyway.

She had asked Tony for years to wear something, anything, to bed if she was going to have to wake him up in the morning and for years he had insisted in sleeping in the nude. On the one hand, she appreciates that he is on his best behavior and taking his new employee’s age seriously. On the other hand, it feels like favoritism towards Miss Summers.

Pepper quashes her unreasonableness and says sharply, “Tony? Wake up!”

Tony jolts awake and then upright, his eyes wide and frightened. “What? What’s wrong? Pepper?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Why did you hire her?”

Tony stares at Pepper for a moment as if she is one of his robots and he cannot quite remember why he lets her anywhere near the fire extinguishers before collapsing back into his bed. His eyes carefully fixed on the ceiling, he says, “Think of it as a community outreach program.”

“You donated 5.7 million dollars to community outreach programs last year.”

“That seems a bit low,” he says, before countering with another suggestion. “Mentoring.”

“That's not the aggregate of your charitable donations, just a portion of it,” Pepper briskly retorts. “And for the record, you also donated money to mentoring programs last year. But if you’d like to mentor a child, I could certainly see about registering you with the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program.”

“There’s probably a sobriety requirement for that,” Tony replies, and there is a beat of silence in which they both carefully avoid mentioning that his general sobriety has vastly improved since his return from Afghanistan. A lot of things have been different since then, including Tony, and while Pepper has found it easy enough to adapt to most of the changes, she is not yet certain how she feels about all of the changes that she has seen in Tony.

In the present, Pepper feels unaccountably tired. “Get up and go take a shower, Tony.”

“Just like old times,” Tony says cheerfully, looking at Pepper for the first time since the conversation began. He smiles sweetly. “Right, Pep?”

Without waiting for an answer, Tony swings himself out of bed and heads for his bathroom.

Not quite, Pepper thinks, watching his progress across the room from the corner of her eye. The view is markedly different from when she was Tony’s personal assistant, and, like the changes to Tony himself, there are pros and cons to it.

Pepper eats breakfast with Tony (which really is like old times) and is careful to leave ninety minutes before Miss Summers arrives.

The question of why Tony hired this particular seventeen year old runaway as opposed to all of the other ones in Los Angeles and then insisted that she start immediately, before any fingerprinting or background checks could be done on her, lingers at the back of Pepper’s mind. It nettles her. A few good deeds do not a resume make. And despite his reputation, Tony is not that reckless, especially not since his return from Afghanistan.

“Why did you hire her?” Pepper demands during their weekly breakfast meeting. It happens to fall on day four of Buffy Summers’ employment, and Pepper is pleased to find that Tony is up, dressed, and cheerful even though he looks exhausted and his hair is wet.

"What can I say?" Tony says with a smirk. "I just like to reach out and touch people. I like changing lives."

"Touching Buffy Summers is a felony," Pepper replies waspishly. "I'd thank you to remember that."

"Remember what?" Miss Summers asks as she passes by, her hands occupied by a caddy for their coffees and a paper bag filled with breakfast goodies. She and Happy had apparently gone out to purchase them while Tony was in the shower.

"Today's schedule," Pepper lies smoothly, ignoring Tony's quiet laughter.

"Ah," says Buffy. She stops long enough to put cups of coffee in front of Pepper and Tony before continuing to the kitchen. From the kitchen she calls, "I wouldn't worry about the touching thing, Miss Potts. He doesn't have a prayer."

Pepper feels her face go painfully hot. Across from her, Tony smirks and waggles his eyebrows, clearly enjoying her embarrassment.

"I'm totally off of gross, old guys," Miss Summers adds as she emerges from the kitchen. In one hand, she holds a short stack of plates on which her coffee, a loose bundle of silverware, and cloth napkins all share the top of the uppermost plate. Balanced on her other hand is a platter covered in neatly arranged sweet rolls and bagels. There is even a little pot of cream cheese in one corner of the tray.

"Hey! I'm not old!" Tony complains.

Pepper smirks, enjoying how the tables had turned.

“I’m seventeen. Any man over twenty-six is super old,” Miss Summers says flippantly as she carefully lays everything out on the table. She takes her seat, producing a StarkPad from the seat next to her. Miss Summers opens the correct program and looks up, ready to take notes on anything that Tony might need to remember.

Buffy Summers may be abysmally unsuited to her position, but at least she takes it seriously. Pepper likes that in an employee. To drown that feeling, Pepper takes a sip of her coffee.

And nearly spits it out.

It is absolutely perfect.

“This is my favorite,” Pepper says, more sharply than she intended. “How did you know?”

“I asked Happy.” Miss Summers replies with a smile.

If asked before that very moment, Pepper would have said that she was willing to eat a little crow, smile a few (false) smiles, and make a few allowances in the name of having a little stability while she settles into her new position as CEO of Stark Industries. Pepper should be happier that Miss Summers seems like she’s going to stick around for a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months. But she can’t be.

Pepper hates it when she’s irrational and petty.

That doesn’t stop her from wincing when she receives Tony’s text that Miss Summers will need a room in Monaco. It is too late to book another room at the hotel (and apparently too much to hope that Miss Summers might be thwarted by a passport or the lack thereof), so Pepper texts Tony an affirmation and informs Miss Rushman that she is going to have a roommate.

Miss Rushman looks about as thrilled as Pepper feels.

Buffy Summers is going to Monaco.

3. Pepper knows the exact moment that she decides to like Miss Summers. Before that precise moment in time and space, Buffy Summers had merely been ‘Tony’s worst hire to date, including the stripper P.A.’.

It is unfair of her, but Pepper holds it against Miss Summers that she inadvertently thwarted Pepper’s efforts to provide Tony with a personal assistant who could double as a bodyguard in a pinch. (And with Tony, sooner or later there is always a pinch.) She makes a conscious effort not to, though, because Miss Summers has so many other flaws that can be held against her.

None of those things matter, though, when Pepper Potts sees Buffy Summers speed the wrong way down Monaco’s race track on a presumably stolen motorcycle to save Tony. Her pencil lined skirt is rucked up and she is wearing a leather jacket that flaps around her frame as she races down the track, threading her bright green bike between racecars and through gaps in traffic that Pepper couldn’t see even on an aerial shot of the race course.

Pepper, who is in the backseat of their current town car, forsakes her grip on the door for a grip on her StarkPad. She holds the computer closer to her face, trying to see everything but the screen is too small for the detail and definition that Pepper desires. Miss Rushman, who is sitting next to Pepper, pushes the pad down to where they can both watch what is happening.

Miss Summers doesn’t slow as she approaches the knot of mangled cars and downed racers. Her (purloined) silver helmet flashes in the sunlight when she jumps the bike, using the side of a crippled racecar as a makeshift ramp. The motorcycle flies through the air, aimed directly for the lunatic menacing Tony and the other downed racers with electric whips.

Two arcs of crackling blue light snap through the air at Miss Summer’s (helpless) airborne bike.

Pepper gasps, gripping the pad so hard that its frame makes little popping noises in her hands.

“Miss Potts?” Happy asks. He’s busy driving like a maniac, not at all hampered by the suitcase handcuffed to his wrist.

As Pepper watches, her heart in her throat, the strings of light arc through the bike and sheer it into three pieces. Pepper expects to see a shower of red. Instead, she sees a rain of silver and green.

Miss Summers is nowhere to be seen for a moment or two before there is a sickening lurch and suddenly a wobbling camera angle is focused on her, tracing the line of her decent. Her body is neatly tucked up into a practiced somersault.

“Nothing,” Pepper says tightly. “They’re still okay, Happy.”

Miss Summers lands on her feet behind Tony’s attacker and drops into a crouch split seconds before the man whirls to face her, his whips lashing through the space where her head and chest had been a split second before. Miss Summers lashes out with her leg, sweeping the man’s legs out from under him.

He falls backwards, the length of his whips swinging wildly, and Miss Summers lunges forward at the same instant, tackling him to the ground. She pins him in place. A moment later, Tony is there and yanking something – the attacker’s homemade arc reactor – off of the other man’s chest.

Miss Summers saves Tony’s life without ever removing her purloined helmet.

That is the precise moment that Pepper Potts realizes that she likes Buffy Summers.

Tony’s new P.A. is undereducated, unskilled, and underage for her position. She knows nothing about business, politics, media relations, art or antiquities acquisition, event planning, or even Stark Industries. Miss Summers can’t take shorthand, is only arguably more responsible than Tony, and can’t even rent a car. On paper, she is a terrible personal assistant.

Miss Summers is fearless in an emergency and that makes her exactly the sort of P.A. that Tony needs. Pepper is going to make Miss Summers become a competent, successful P.A. even if it kills her.

Pepper has found her next project.

4. Pepper knows at least some of what Tony sees in Miss Summers.

On the flight home, between conversing with Tony and reviewing files, Pepper compares and contrasts GED programs and online high schools. Soon, Buffy Summers is enrolled in an online high school and Pepper has begun the process of cleaning up Miss Summers’ police record.

No protégé of Pepper Potts is going to remain uneducated, unskilled, and unfit for her position.

Pepper suspects that she should probably make time to tell Miss Summers that she is now Pepper’s protégé and thus a reflection on Pepper and Stark Industries as well as Tony Stark. She pencils the conversation in for after Tony’s appearance at the Stark Expo, which happened to be two weeks from Tuesday. That seems soon enough.