It's About Time

Ch. 4

On Saturday morning, Peter woke up to his dad yelling into his room it was time to get up.  Peter groaned and rolled over, asking FRIDAY what the time was.  It was barely past 7:00.  He was being woken up at 7:13 on a Saturday morning.  Peter wanted to die.  There had better be a good reason he was being woken up so early on the weekend.  Then again, he figured there must be since his dad had seemed wide awake and unless something was happening, he always slept until 10:30 at least.  That didn't mean Peter wanted to get up, though, and he made a point of being as slow as possible getting ready.  He took a long shower, room time getting dressed, then slowly meandered down the hall and into the kitchen.

"Finally!"  Pepper exclaimed when she saw Peter.  She pointed to a plate of food and he sat down in front of it.  "We have to be down at the courthouse in thirty minutes!"

"Wait, what?"  Peter asked.  He began shoveling food into his mouth and eating quickly.  "Why?"  Pepper frowned at him for talking with his mouth full and he felt his face heat up.

"The lawyer called this morning at 6:30 saying they could get us in at 8:30 and get your name changed and all that,"  Pepper said.  Peter's eyes widened.  They were doing it today?  "We're leaving in fifteen minutes so hurry up."

Exactly fifteen minutes later, Pepper was hurrying Peter and Tony into the elevator and down to the garage.  Both had suits on and Pepper was wearing a dress.  Even though it was a private hearing, Pepper still insisted they look nice.  She even promised they could go out to eat if both Peter and Tony behaved the entire time.  Thankfully the courthouse was close enough to the Tower they were five minutes early even after Tony forgot his phone and had to run up to grab it.  They managed to get into the courthouse without being spotted and met with their lawyer inside.

"It should be fairly quick,"  Heinrich Foss said.  Pepper nodded, walking beside him.  He explained the process to her while Tony and Peter muttered to each other behind them.

Once they arrived inside the hearing room, Peter sat down between Pepper and Tony.  The room was empty except for the judge, Heinrich, the state attorney, and the man taking down notes.  Heinrich went through the process as though it was a regular occurrence.  Peter tried to pay attention, but it wasn't that interesting to listen to.  It took almost two hours before the state attorney was done asking questions.  Of course, no objections occurred and the judge granted the name change.  Peter waited excitedly for them to give Pepper the certificate then happily followed them back out to their car.

"Now we just have to get it changed on everything else,"  Pepper said.

"And register me for school!"  Peter added.  Pepper nodded.

"And register you for school,"  she confirmed.

Just as she promised, Pepper let Tony and Peter get pizza from Dominoes.  They changed out of their suits once they got home before they could eat the pizza, though.  Once they were back in comfy clothes, Peter and Tony raced each other to the two pizza boxes.  Pepper just rolled her eyes and grabbed leftover spaghetti from a few days before.  Peter and Tony took both pizza boxes down to the lab with them after making sure Pepper wouldn't want any.  They were going to working on upgrading the Iron Man suit and Peter really wanted to show him the footage of Steve and Bucky screaming from the capture the flag game.

"That's great,"  Tony said, wiping a tear from his eye as he laughed.  Karen replayed it and he started laughing again.  "Oh man, FRIDAY, please save this."

"On it, sir,"  FRIDAY replied.  After the third replay, Tony had to forcefully shut it off so he could recover.  Peter's stomach ached from laughing so much, so he sat down on the floor and laid on his back.

"The things that go on in this house when I'm not here,"  Tony sighed, finally able to catch his breath.  Peter grinned and sat back up.  "Now, we really do need to upgrade my suit."

"Yeah,"  Peter agreed.  "It's pretty ancient."  Tony rolled his eyes and stood up from his desk.  He had FRIDAY bring up his latest suit and run scans on it for ways he could improve it.

Sorry it's short, but I didn't want to drag it on uselessly. I hope you liked it, though.