Chapter Four
March 3rd, 2008
A ten-year-old Sara’s sitting cross-legged on the floor of Tony’s lab, frustrated with the two pieces of computer parts in front of her. Why were they so difficult? Harsha was at his internship with Hammer Industries R&D, and Sesha had a rehearsal for her big concert at Carnegie Hall. Sandhya brought Sara to the tower for her usual weekend hangout with Tony.
“I can’t get it right!” Sara complains, glaring at her motherboard. Her hands shook with frustration, and suddenly, tiny flames erupted from her fingertips.
Hold on. She had watched Avatar: The Last Airbender with her siblings every time an episode came on.
Was Sara… firebending?
“Saranika!” Sandhya rushed to reach for her daughter, assuming the parts she was tinkering with were on fire, but Tony was faster.
“Sandhya, don’t touch her!” he yells, grabbing a fire extinguisher. He’s a genius; he should’ve known. Sara wasn’t burning. The flames danced around her hands, responding to her emotions, and her eyes were sparkling with wonder. She was NOT scared.
Sara’s voice trembled. “Amma, what’s happening to me?”
The adults looked concerned. That’s weird – neither had any history of supernatural or enhanced abilities in their family. Sara’s flames soon died, though.
“Can you do it again?” Tony questions, staring at his daughter’s hands.
“Wait,” Sandhya stops. “Vira, amma,” she begins in Telugu. “I think we need to keep this between us for now. You can’t tell Anna, Akka, or even your father.” She gives an apologetic look to Tony, who just nodded in agreement.
“Huh, why?” the girl demands, a spark lighting and going out from her finger as she gestured. “This is so cool, plus Anna and Akka tell me everything!”
“Sometimes,” Tony interjects, kneeling beside her, “we need to keep secrets to protect the people we love.” How ironic – Sandhya stops herself from laughing.
They spent the rest of the day helping Sara control her flames and looking up martial arts forms that could work well with her fire powers, so eventually, the poor girl was so tired she fell asleep on Tony’s expensive porcelain couch. Yes, that porcelain couch. Sandhya can’t sit on that thing without getting PTSD, and Lords help her; her baby daddy figured that out at one point.
It became 9 PM, and Sandhya and Tony were both in the kitchen, with cups of chai that the latter had made.
“With these powers, she can’t return to school, Aniruddh,” Sandhya says quietly. “Not until she can properly control it.”
Tony was already coming up with alternatives. “I can set her up in online school – there’s this high-end program that lots of prodigies – athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians, artists, actors, you name it – enroll in, and Sara could get the best engineering education she could. Plus, I can put her with a martial artist here who can help her control her powers and use them for combat whenever needed.”
The lady nods. “Yeah, but what will we tell Arun?”
“Nothing too revealing,” Tony says firmly. “Tell him that Sara being in sixth grade is too easy for her – she’s not getting challenged – and that she needs more time to develop her engineering skills so that she can be as good as me,” he grins. “Actually, ten times better than me.”
Sandhya chuckles. “Alright,” she stirs her chai absently. “But, do you think… was this because of us? Because of what we…” she trails off, looking at that same couch Sara was sleeping on, but Tony understood. They tried their best not to bring up that night, even more so after Tony knew the truth about Sara.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But we can figure it out, right? We always do.”
A slight creaking noise from the living room had them both turning. Sara had just shifted in her sleep, one hand dangling from the couch with a tiny flame erupting from her palm. Tony blew it out and carefully draped a fire-resistant blanket over her.
Tony felt a familiar ache in his chest as the two watched their daughter sleep. Although she looked so much like him when focused on a problem, she had Sandhya’s determinedness—her way of moving through the world. Now, this power had made her even more unique yet vulnerable.
“I think I should get her home…” Sandhya falters softly. “Arun is probably worried.”
Tony nodded, carefully lifting Sara from the couch. At that moment, he allowed himself to slip into the father role—he felt pride, fear, and the innate need to protect her. However, due to his and Sandhya's shared love for Arun, he knew he could only do that from a distance.
Sara curled instinctively against Tony’s chest, mumbling something unintelligible in her sleep. Sandhya gathered their things, including the half-finished circuit board that started this new chapter.
When the group reached Sandhya’s car, Tony carefully settled Sara into the backseat, ensuring the fire-resistant blanket was still wrapped around her. He couldn’t help but brush a strand of hair from her face – it made his chest tighten. The paternal role still felt weird to him because it shouldn't have been him.
“I’ll start researching martial arts instructors tomorrow,” he whispers, closing the car door. “I can also make one of my labs fireproof.”
Sandhya nods, her hands about to twist the key into the car. “Okay. I’ll talk to Arun about switching Sara to homeschooling – he trusts your every word when it comes to engineering, so I think that should be easy.” she pauses, looking at their sleeping little girl. “I never thought Sara would be like this – unique in unpredictable ways.”
“She was always going to be unique,” Tony replies, going soft. “You’re her mother.”
Their eyes met briefly, weighted with years of unspoken words, shared secrets, and now this new challenge. But anyway, they looked away first, protecting the careful balance they’d maintained for so long. Tony walked back into the tower to his lab while making mental lists: fireproof equipment to order, training programs to design, and ways to help Sara control this gift without revealing too much.
And then he saw the motherboard she’d been working on. He took a closer look at it.
She almost got it right. A ten-year-old. With no instructions.
Tony pulls out his phone to start making calls. Sara needs the best training possible, and as one of the richest people in the country, Tony has the resources to make that happen, even if he cannot help up close—for now.
“Hey, J?” he calls out to his AI. “Start a new project file. Code name: Inferna Protocol.”