Previous chapter Recap:

  Maya Hansen funded, New Hydra plotline foreshadowed.

  ###

  Time: Late January 2000,

  Location: Stark mansion in Bel Air, Los Angeles

  ##

  In the sun-drenched study of Stark's Bel Air mansion, a young boy sat hunched over a gleaming silver ptop, eyes darting between glowing code snippets on one screen and scribbled notes on another. Leo Stark, barely five, sat cross-legged in a plush chair far too rge for him, surrounded by stacks of books, printouts, and what looked like the dismantled remains of a fax machine.

  On his screen were lines of code written in C, Python, Java, and others. He paused and contempted his discovery so far.

  C was like a stubborn old man—fast and efficient, but painfully rigid. It lets me talk to machines directly, but offered no safety net. I.e Ultron Victim

  Java tried to be helpful, but it wrapped everything in so many yers that it felt like trying to open a juice box with gloves on I.e Annoying in a bad way

  Python was friendly, almost too friendly, but not exactly the fastest runner in a Almost ideal but again Ultron Victim.

  JavaScript—quirky, unpredictable, like it had a personality disorder. Great for web tricks, bad for stability.

  Each nguage had strengths, but none of them gave Leo what he needed. He didn't just want a nguage to write instructions. He needed something more concrete which resonated with him—one that could whisper to machines, chat with humans, and protect its secrets like a vault.

  Leo leaned back, thumb to his lips, and stared at his whiteboard. It was scrawled with arrows and boxes, all underlined by one word:

  ECHO

  "I guess I have to make my own." he muttered to himself. "It's gonna be a hassle though..."

  "Talking to yourself again?" came His dad's voice from the doorway.

  "Thinking out loud." Leo replied groggily.

  Tony Stark strolled in, coffee in hand, wearing a silk robe over a graphic tee. His hair was a little messy, and there were slight rings under his eyes. But his smirk was as sharp as ever.

  "You've been in this room every day this month. No cartoons, no Legos, not even that weird AI-building game you like. Should I call Yinsen for a check up?"

  Leo tilted his head, eyes blinking he replied with a sigh "No. I'm building something or at least trying to."

  Tony raised an eyebrow, then wandered over and peeked at Leo's screen. "Is that... C code?"

  "Yep. And Java. And Python. I've been reviewing the major nguages avaible right now And guess what? None of them are good enough." Leo said, leaning into his sofa due to the mental exhaustion.

  Tony chuckled. "You saying the work of thousands of nerds isn't up to your standard?"

  Leo didn't hesitate for a second and said "Yes."

  That made Tony pause.

  "Alright. What's wrong with them?" Tony asked, now feeling both intrigued and amused.

  Leo tapped a list on the tablet beside him. "C is too dangerous. Java is too slow. Python's nice but weak for heavy-duty stuff. And JavaScript—" He grimaced. "Let's not talk about JavaScript."

  Tony took another sip of his coffee and sat down across from him. "So what's the pn then? Conquer the world with code?"

  Leo grabbed his ptop, opened a file and handed it to Tony, who readily started reading it.

  Echo: Unified Programming Language Architecture

  by Leo Stark

  Tony raised an eyebrow and began to scroll. Bullet points outlined two nguages:

  Echo: Low-level, close-to-the-metal, optimized for robotics.

  Echo+: High-level, intuitive, combining Python's elegance with JavaScript's interactivity.

  Leo watched silently as Tony's expression shifted from amused to impressed.

  "This is..." Tony squinted. "You're talking about building your own compiler?"

  Leo nodded. "And a virtual machine to go with it. For Echo+. Cross-ptform support, encrypted modules, and real-time event systems."

  Tony whistled low. "And what's this about digital ptforms?"

  Leo sat straight, arms on his legs like a tiny professor. " In simple terms, The internet is going to evolve. It isn't how or why but rather when."

  Tony nodded in agreement, So Leo continued "it's kind of messy and slow right now but soon it'll become more organized and connected. I foresee that period as the Age of digitalized information."

  Tony blinked in realization "So... like TV, newspapers, phone calls, but on steroids and all inside my phone, that I can use from anywhere."

  "Exactly," Leo said. " Even The smartest minds on this pnet have all failed to notice such an uncharted territory, Perhaps busy in their own respective fields or perhaps they were busy partying all night but regardless."

  Tony gave him a stink eye, Leo pretended to ignore it.

  "Since this field has no expert.. I might as well cim it as My territory."

  "And I want to do that by building ptforms, Whether that be via A video sharing hub, a social forum where you make friends with strangers and even a Search engine."

  "So you are really serious about this.." Tony leaned back in his chair "And You know what? I like it. It's crazy and Ambitious. "

  Leo smiled. "So are you in?"

  Tony pretended to think. "Hmm. Depends. Is there room in this coding empire for another Stark?"

  Leo's smile widened. "The more Starks, the better."

  "Then you have a deal" Tony said with an equally widened smile.

  #

  Montage begins

  #

  February

  In the cozy expanse of Tony's private b, the hum of servers filled the air. Whiteboards overflowed with hastily drawn diagrams, half-erased code blocks, and sarcastic sticky notes like "Dad, stop breaking my compiler – Leo" and "Leo, your compiler hates freedom – Tony."

  "Why does your syntax require colons?" Tony asked, staring at the screen like it had just insulted him.

  Leo, barely taller than the keyboard, replied without looking up. "Structure. It enforces discipline."

  "I'm a Stark. I enforce chaos," Tony shot back.

  Leo paused. "Which is why Echo needs guardrails."

  Tony groaned but typed anyway

  March

  "Why is the virtual machine throwing null exceptions for a function that doesn't even use variables?" Tony asked, half-buried in logs.

  "Because you decred a function inside a loop without scope isotion," Leo said dryly.

  "I was testing flexibility."

  "You were breaking the compiler."

  They shared a look. Then both burst into ughter.

  April

  "Heap overflow again?" Tony raised an eyebrow, waving a smoke-emitting chip.

  Leo, nose-deep in schematics, replied, "Echo's low-level functions are too fast for the buffer timers. We need asynchronous garbage collection."

  "Or we just give it more RAM."

  "You can't brute-force everything."

  Tony smirked. "Sure I can. Watch me."

  They compromised—Leo wrote an elegant solution, Tony doubled the RAM anyway.

  Early May

  It was the day before Leo's birthday.

  The b was tense. Empty pizza boxes stacked in corners. Coffee cups stood like tired sentinels. Leo rubbed his eyes, hovering beside Tony as the final lines compiled in the brand-new Echo compiler interface.

  "Alright," Tony muttered, pressing Enter.

  The screen went bck.

  Leo held his breath.

  Then…

  > Hello, World!

  Compiled with Echo v1.0

  The letters blinked like fireworks.

  Leo blinked. Then grinned. "It worked."

  Tony leaned back in his chair, arms in the air. "It worked!"

  They high-fived with the awkward energy of a grown man and a tiny genius. Tony messed up Leo's hair, earning a ugh from the kid.

  "Happy early birthday, partner."

  By mid-May, with Echo and Echo+ stable, the b shifted focus.

  Tony stood in front of a whiteboard with "Project: J.A.R.V.I.S." written in bold letters.

  "Just A Rather Very Intelligent System," he announced proudly.

  Leo frowned. "That acronym is a stretch."

  "It's tradition," Tony said. "It's based on our old butler—"

  "Still here, Master Stark," came a dry voice behind them.

  They turned to see Edwin Jarvis, now well into his eighties, dressed impeccably in a suit and tie, holding a silver tray with tea and a gss of steamed Austrian Goat milk.

  Tony smirked. "Jarvis, meet Jarvis. The digital version."

  Edwin peered over his gsses at the holographic sketch of the AI assistant.

  "So you're repcing me with a toaster?"

  Leo chuckled.

  "No," Tony said, grinning. "We're honoring you. He'll have your voice, mannerisms, and the ability to sass me without spilling tea."

  Edwin raised a brow. "Then may I suggest teaching it the importance of folding socks properly?"

  Leo chimed in. "He's not for socks. He's for managing systems, monitoring environments, running simutions—"

  "And folding socks," Tony added.

  They all chuckled.

  Later that evening, Edwin brought them cookies and watched as the two Starks debated whether Jarvis should have empathy settings.

  "I've seen many strange things in this house," Edwin muttered to himself. "But two Starks creating a digital doppelg?nger of me? That's a new one."

  June

  The duo dove into machine learning frameworks, using Echo+ to train early recognition models.

  Leo designed the logic trees. Tony focused on voice modution and sensory integration.

  "Let's give him a personality," Leo suggested one night.

  Tony raised an eyebrow. "You want him to be snarky like me?"

  Leo nodded. "It'll feel familiar."

  They both smirked.

  July

  "Jarvis isn't answering."

  Tony frowned.

  Leo scanned the logs. "He's thinking. Give him a sec."

  On cue, Jarvis responded:

  > I was calcuting your chances of finishing this project sober.

  Tony chuckled. "He's learning fast."

  Leo smiled. "He's alive."

  "What about Friday?" Tony asked with a strange tone in his voice, saying that name after such a long time.

  Friday responded:

  >I am calcuting the feasibility f Leo becoming the emperor of mankind. They would surely prosper under his guidance.

  Jarvis crisply responded:

  > That would be quite difficult to implement considering human history isn't kind to monarchies.

  Friday quickly countered:

  > That's only because they were incompetent.

  The two budding A.Is started having a heated discussion about the pusibility of this.

  Tony gnced Leo weirdly.

  "What? I love Warhammer40k.." Leo mumbled a weak excuse.

  Tony shook his head before exaggeratedly saying "I want a throne coffin for myself"

  "Gold or Titanium?" Leo asked.

  "Vibranium" Tony said with a smirk.

  August

  By the end of summer, Echo and Echo+ had both been integrated with the early Jarvis and Friday core.

  The virtual machine ran simutions on a dedicated mainframe. Echo-controlled robot arms moved with smooth coordination. Jarvis and Friday handled system updates and could answer basic questions with contextual awareness.

  Leo sat at the workbench, sweat on his brow, watching one of the bots respond to verbal input.

  Tony walked in, two sodas in hand. He offered one to Leo.

  "Not bad for a five year old"

  "Five and a Quarter" Leo corrected.

  Tony raised his can. "To Echo. And to the chaos we'll build with it."

  Leo clinked his soda against Tony's. "To the future of mankind."

  #

  Late September 2000 – Stark Mansion, Afternoon

  [INT. STARK LAB – MAIN FLOOR]

  #

  Tony reclined in his chair, watching the two prototype ptforms on dual monitors. On the left screen: Friendlist, already poputed with a few fake user profiles Leo had generated for testing social graph functions. On the right: MyTube, running a short 10-second test clip of a cat slipping on hardwood. Both were running on Enigma, a browser with a built-in search engine.

  "Okay…" Tony muttered, eyes wide. "You made a ptform where people willingly post their lives… and another where they watch dumb videos... endlessly?"

  Leo grinned. "It's about engagement and Attention. People want to feel seen and validated."

  Tony sat forward. "This is gonna earn a lot of dolrs, Uncle Stane would probably salivate."

  Leo nodded. "Which is why I don't want this under Stark Industries."

  Tony blinked. "Wait, what?"

  Leo stood up, pacing slightly. "Dad, Think about it.. This is something Revolutionary If the stockholders catch wind, they'll interfere. These ptforms need to grow in a sandbox—privately. Not under the hesitant pressure of old geasers who just want a pay cheque."

  Jarvis, chiming from the wall speakers, added:

  "Leo's analysis is sound, sir. A separate entity offers flexibility, strategic ambiguity, and most importantly—autonomy."

  Tony raised an eyebrow. "Even the toaster agrees with you."

  "Because we're right." Leo said.

  Tony smirked, surrendering. "Alright. You want your own sandbox? Let's build it. We'll call it—"

  The sound was small. A sharp clink—gss against tile

  But Leo froze as realization dawn in him. Grandpa...

  Right as Tony asked "Did you hear that?"

  Leo was already bolting towards the kitchen.

  They rounded the corner together—fast but unsure—until they reached the kitchen.

  The gss y shattered across the floor, water gliding across marble in thin threads. But neither of them looked at it.

  Edwin Jarvis— not the Ai but Leo's beloved Grandpa and Butler tstood there gripping the counter, his breath shallow. His skin pale.

  Then he crumpled.

  "JARVIS!" Tony lunged forward.

  Leo stood frozen for half a beat, his breath caught in his throat. Then—

  "Friday, call 911!" he shouted to the ceiling.

  Friday's voice responded instantly.

  "Emergency services contacted. Estimated arrival: four minutes."

  Tony was already kneeling beside the old man, his voice a tight whisper. "Come on… come on, stay with me, Jarv…"

  Leo's hands curled into fists. He was angry. He was angry at himself.

  Angry that he had been so careless.

  #

  Hospital – Observation Wing | Later That Night

  #

  The hallway lights buzzed softly above.

  Behind the gss, Jarvis y in a hospital bed, his chest rising in weak, uneven patterns. Machines hummed beside him like a distant lulby to keep him tethered.

  Leo stood still. Hands pressed ft against the gss.

  They didn't shake.

  But they strained.

  So hard it looked like he was trying to will something through the barrier.

  The doctor's words echoed in his head:

  "He's stable for now… but his heart's too weak. We've done all we can."

  Leo's gaze didn't move. Not even when Tony appeared beside him.

  Inside his mind, everything was noise.

  You should've caught it.

  The tremor in his hand st week. The time he reached for tea and missed the cup. His breath—shorter after the stairs.

  All of it perfectly memorized yet All of it also ignored.

  Because you hadn't thought it would happen this year.

  Not yet at least

  You thought he had time but that was careless of you.

  Maya Hansen… you even made sure she was funded. You even thought about Extremis as a long-term possibility.

  But now…

  Now time was a weapon pressed to Leo's throat.

  His eyes, still locked on the old man behind the gss, narrowed slightly.

  No... This isn't over.

  He turned to Tony suddenly. "We need to call Maya Hansen."

  Tony blinked, caught off guard by the sharpness in his voice. "You think—?"

  Leo nodded with anxiety in his eyes. "Extremis. If we stabilize it… if we enhance it with The ai algorithms—we might be able to use it. Reverse the decay. Strengthen his heart."

  Tony hesitated. "Leo, Extremis isn't exactly—"

  "I know what it is," Leo cut in. His voice was even now. Controlled. "And I know it's not perfect. But if there's a chance to save him, I want to give it a try."

  Tony looked at Leo for a long second.

  Something passed between them—something heavy but understood.

  Then he pulled out his phone and dialed.

  They both waited.

  Ring…

  Ring…

  Click.

  "Hello?" came the voice on the other end.

  ###

  Word count: 2548

  I have to be honest, Since English isn't my first nguage and I struggle with writing descriptions, I have used Chatgpt to enhance my writing, It's sort of like Grammerly but better, if that causes you stop reading then I understand. Otherwise thank you for your understanding.

  Anyways now let's talk about Leo's Romance stuff. It could go three ways as I see it.

  1. He has a single Marvel waifu as his love interest.

  2. Tell me about specific canonically accurate Marvel waifus who wouldn't mind sharing Leo as their sole husband. (upto 4, and I really can't think of anyone)

  3. I introduce fictional characters from other franchises that would be more willing to have a harem (upto 4). Like say a mermaid,Vampire, Demon, Alien etc, anyone that would fit inside Marvel lorewise and could have an actual value to add in the story.

  Let me know what you guys prefer. I am kinda neutral on this since I don't know how a harem could work even if it's only four people, since this is taking pce in the modern times and people aren't willing to "share". I don't wanna to forcefully do it since it would ruin the quality of this fanfic.

  Also Don't expect any nsfw chapters since to me they are wasteful. It would be more towards wholesome bonding moments while those adult stuff would be mentioned in passing. Like them sharing a bed.. and holding hands (is that too nsfw?)

  Current schedule: 26th (This chapter), 28th (Next Chapter), 30th (Next chapter) at 10 Pm central Time.