Chapter Text
Lisa had tour group duty. Ugh! On any other day she'd have loved to get a break from her work at the lab table to show people around her place of work. It was a magical place and, yes, maybe that was a strange thing to say about a place that was dedicated to science, but it nevertheless was the most fitting description for Lisa, sue her! Not just because the Avengers lived on the top few floors of the building and there were some actual people there who could do magic, no! It was the general atmosphere here. Researchers running on two hours of sleep in the last 48 hours, on their 5th cup of coffee at 10 am. Scientists working on things to make the world a better place. Interns learning. Everyone concentrating on their own work but still somehow participating in a big unorchestrated dance that flowed flawlessly anyhow. On some days, she felt as if she was part of a bigger being. She felt how she imagined bees must feel in their hives. And that was magic to her! Too big to understand and yet it felt so right! She guessed that some things she actually didn't want to understand. They just were! And they were right!
On most days, she loved to lead outsiders into this magical realm that was Stark Industries, to show them a glimpse of the marvels she experienced every day, but also to get an outsider's perspective on everything. More often than not, she'd return to her lab table with new ideas or solutions to problems that had bothered her for a long time.
Today, however, was an exception. She'd had a quarrel with her flatmate about the cleaning roster again! She had a deadline for a college essay the following day on which she hadn't even started yet. Her sibling'd been dumped by their girlfriend (again! - they were on and off constantly) and Lisa'd been on the phone with them too long into the night (or morning?!). All in all, she was in a bad mood, stressed and sleep-deprived.
Managing only half a smile towards the receptionist and the security personnel, she entered the tower and took the elevator to her lab. It was 8am. The tour group was supposed to arrive at 9am. A high school class. Great! 30 hormonal 17 year-olds, who'd probably rather be somewhere else! Today was really not her day! She dumped her bag next to her work station and slumped down into her seat, eyes closed and held her face in her hands. She was sooo tired!
After five seconds, she forced herself to start and get as much done as possible before she had to leave for the tour, but when she opened her eyes, she experienced the first positive thing that day. A yellow post-it. Written on it was, in a by now familiar handwriting and pink pen, the solution to a problem that had bothered her for the last several days. Around the solution were doodles of small flowers and hearts.
This was another thing that made the tower a magical place. There were actually some unexplained things going on. One of these was the cryptid. It had started about a year ago. A senior scientist had come into work one morning and there, in pink pen, scribbled on a yellow post-it had been a proposition to improve the code for the robot, he'd been working on. It was an assistance robot for people who were bed-bound for medical reasons and he'd finished the coding the night before, but the notes scribbled on the post-it allowed a much more efficient processing, while simultaneously adding another feature that the scientist had decided not to include before because he'd deemed it too complex for the scope of the project.
During the following weeks, there were several more incidents of the kind and the "cryptid" became one of SI's urban legends. Nobody had ever seen the person (which was strange per se because the tower was never completely empty, no matter how late at night or how early in the morning it was - never trust a scientist to have a healthy life-work balance!) and this just added fuel to the theorizing about who the mystery note-writer could be. There was a group chat dedicated to the cryptid. People sent pictures of the notes they'd received (of course, the actual science part was redacted - industrial espionage was a thing) and by now, the group chat had more than 300 members, ranging from low-level interns to the most senior lab directors.
They discussed theories about who the crytid could be (Lisa liked the crazy ones best! Her favourites were: 1.) the ghost of an employee who'd died in a lab explosion over 30 years before (Yes! The tower hadn't even been built by then and the explosion had happened in another place but maybe the ghost had moved together with the company?), 2.) an other-dimensional being that was invisible to human eyes and tried to make its presence known through these messages (although she had to admit that maybe solving research problems might not be the most efficient to do this - such a being could also just leave a note that said 'Hey, I'm here!' - but she still liked the poetic nature of the thought), 3.) an experiment gone wrong that had developed a mind of its own, escaped and was now passing its time pondering scientific questions (Again, yes, she was aware that that was highly unlikely - especially because no one could find records of any experiment that would qualify). Lisa was aware that she preferred the fantastic ideas that most others just ignored and scoffed at but she didn't care. It was much more romantic than it being a bored, secretly genius janitor).
People also tried to figure out if there were patterns in when the notes turned up or where the cryptid went on which nights but with no luck. The cryptid seemed to bestow his presents completely at random. But, like everyone else, Lisa wouldn't question it too much when it meant that she'd sometimes get help with her work.
Until her alarm informed her that it was time to prepare for the tour, she worked for about half an hour in deep concentration. After sending a picture of the cryptid's note to the group chat, she went through the schedule for today's tour and collected the visitor passes for the students. She was still tired and stressed, but her mood was a bit better thanks to the cryptid.
During the morning, her mood improved further. She welcomed the students who'd hurried in from the thick rain and were dripping onto the marble floor of the lobby. She handed out the unmarked white visitor badges to everyone and lead them through security and brought them to their first stop: the museum. They were smart kids and due to them being at a science school, most of them were genuinely interested (so at least that fear had been unwarranted!), even though Lisa had to disappoint them by telling them that there wouldn't be any Avenger-related stops during the tour.
She actually enjoyed showing them around the museum. There was one kid (who seemed to be the leader of a small clique), who tormented another kid and accused him of lying about having an internship at SI - "Poor boy," she thought. They didn't hire high-schoolers as regular interns but they had a program where students could work and learn about working at SI for one week. She thought that the kid must have been part of that and then maybe had glorified his SI internship a bit - who wouldn't, with a bully like that around? It irked her though, that the teacher never said anything against the bullying. She tried to interrupt and stop the boy whenever she could, even though the other kid didn't seem very disturbed and just ignored the bully.
She noticed that this boy (the one who got bullied) - Peter, as she soon found out - seemed to be even more attentive than the other students. His questions were challenging, his comments intriguing even from her point of view.