Chapter 3.2- All of Infinity in the Palm of my hands (MCU; Clark Kent SI)

I never advertised the fact that I was the bastard of some English Lord, so it would make sense for him to assume it was something I was keen on hiding. Not that I really cared, but someone who knew little about me would be perfectly justified in making such an assumption.

“Yes, it's quite a safety net,” I said, playing off his words in the same way I would if I did actually care about keeping my origins a secret.

“Indeed. But I get your point. It was all a pipe dream either way. They call you the next me. No way would I have taken such a deal. Instead, I have another proposition for you. How do you feel about investment?” He asked, switching threads in an instant.

“From Stark Industries or Tony Stark?” I asked.

“Tony Stark, please. It turns out having so much of my personal wealth in a single company is a pretty terrible idea,” he said, taking another sip of the whiskey. This was his third glass so far, and if I couldn’t literally see the palladium killing him, I’d be worried about his alcohol consumption.

“I see,” I said, getting the point.

“An investment from Tony Stark would be pretty useful. But the PR effects have to be properly weighed.” Like I said earlier, public opinion about him swayed with the wind. But there was one general consensus: the man was a bloody genius.

“I get what you’re saying without saying, kid. You can give it to me straight. I’m simply not the most popular guy around these days,” the genius admitted, and I pounced on it.

“So you can see why I am hesitant to accept your investment.”

“It’ll be anonymous. I’m putting my own money down, not Stark Industries', and unlike the publicly traded company, I don’t have to trumpet my investments to the rest of the world,” he said idly. I nodded at his words.

“But people have ways of finding out what they shouldn’t,” I said simply. The press had a history of finding out details of transactions that would best be kept from the public eye.

“Between the both of us, I’m sure we have the capacity to prevent that from happening,” Tony said while chugging down another glass.

“But that’s not the only reason I’m here. I want to invest, and I want to give you some useful advice. One genius to another,” his voice was noticeably less upbeat.

“Hmm?” I made the sound with my mouth to show he had my full attention, which he did. Or rather, he had as much of my attention as I would ever devote to a single task. Kryptonian minds were not human ones after all. We were superior. I silently chastised the part of my mind that sounded like Zod that had spoken those words even as I agreed with them in substance. I’d had the pleasure of being both at different points, and the difference was night and day.

“Get an office. A big one. Hire loads of people. Software engineers, product designers, manufacturing people, and people to manage all those people. A server room too. All your excuses of proprietary tech are beginning to get old and people are already whispering.”

“That?”

“You’re being supported by someone big. Someone big and foreign. The fact that no one has any clue of how you keep things running, and the fact that your apps have managed to explode in popularity so quickly are doing you no favors on that end. You don’t want stuff like that on you, trust me. The American Government has crushed companies bigger than yours for accusations of less.”

“There’s nothing like that happening,” I said instantly.

“Of course, there isn't. I know AI code when I see it. But you don’t want to advertise that you have one of those, do you? You’d quickly find yourself target number 1 for a whole host of nasty things.” I blinked at him, mind unraveling his words.

“I don’t have anything like that.”

“Sure you don’t, kid. Sure you don’t.” His smirk was infuriating. Like he knew more than everyone else in the world and was not shy to let us know. It was a huge part of the reason I wanted nothing to do with Tony Stark. The arrogance. The undeserved arrogance. But even at that, I saw his point. From the eyes of an outsider, I took a good look at my company. Three apps released in a relatively small time frame. Each of them a smash hit, and each of them running smoothly with no bugs, glitches, or flaws (Kelex could not make imperfect code. He’d sooner delete himself). It was odd for a new company like mine. And I was doing it all from a penthouse in Massachusetts.

The server space thing was something I was shocked that I hadn’t even considered. Sure, I ran everything off of a single server somewhere in my apartment, but the only reason that worked was that it was 90% Kryptonian tech. If I chose to pivot to selling servers, I’d probably eclipse whatever I was doing with social media in hours. That actually wasn’t that bad an idea, now that I considered it. Move to providing infrastructure. Cloud computing wasn’t really the monster business it was in my old world, but if I cornered the market in its infancy, I’d be well on my way to multibillionaire status.

The numbers stopped mattering after a point, but they began to matter for a completely different reason after that point. As things stood now, I had a shit-ton of money. But still not "fuck you" money. The kind of money that would be a superpower on its own. That was my goal. Partly because I’d spent my past life poor, and partly because I wouldn’t be satisfied until I was at the top of the food chain in every ocean I swam in. That was freedom. Being the bigger fish. Not just the bigger fish, the biggest fish.

“I’ll take your words under advisement, Tony.”

“Good. Now back to my investment.”

“You still own close to 67%, do you not?” He asked, and I nodded.

“Good, why don’t we just know that down to 51. I’ll take 16% of Future Industries off your hands for let’s say, 5 billion.” The shock on my face, played up for his benefit, was a joy to him.

“No. Make it 10 billion,” he said, changing his mind instantly. Tony Stark could afford to toss around billions like they were candy. This was all a game to him, and I struggled to figure out his motivations here. What could be the point of handing money over to me just like that?

“You’re pumping up the value of Future Industries for some reason,” I said to him, and his smile got wider (if that was even possible).

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Why?”

“Partly because I can, and partly because I want to see what happens. Use the money to do the things I’ve told you. You need to be seen contributing to the economy with your company if you want any hope of not being crushed,” he said, a wide smile in place.

I tried squinting at him and watching his biological reactions, trying to find some lie in his words. But from what I could tell, he was being honest. Probably not completely honest. There had to be another reason for this, but it wasn’t one I could spot for the life of me.

A/N; Yup. I still haven’t completed the chapter. Please don’t hurt me, master.