The Kids Aren't Alright

Violet's life was destined to be unusual when she was born the daughter of a genius, billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist; Tony Stark. Also being the daughter of a Greek Goddess was just another added variable.

Prologue: A Lunch Lady With Talons Trashes an Art Room

The first time Violet noticed something strange was when she was five.

She was considered smarter than other kids, though, not as smart as her father was. She'd heard it many times, the gossip and whispers of adults around her. She was good at math, she could read more than a kid her age was supposed to, but in no way was she the genius brain-child her father was.

That's the long way of saying she ended up in a first-grade class by the age of five—she could have gotten into second grade, but Pepper (who just recently became her father's personal assistant) was afraid that she'd fail at making friends that much older than her. She turned six the next month, anyways.

She attended one of those upper-class, private schools packed with rich kids already spoiled by the riches their parents poured onto them. Violet was no different, so she found little to no trouble fitting in.

Bella Tran, her best friend, was the daughter of a man who made phones. Well, not a worker, but the person who designed this. Therefore, Bella had her very own phone created just for her—with only the ability to call her parents, call her father's assistant, or call the police. That didn't stop the two girls from pressing in random numbers and pretending to have conversations with people.

It was a sunny March day (most days were sunny in Malibu), the first-grade class was playing on the playground, a small hoard of uniform-wearing children running about and screaming.

Violet and Bella were sat on the swings, once more playing their self-made Telephone Game and giggling and the fake situations each other made up. Normally, Melody Michaels would join them, but she was absent that day.

As Bella began a dramatic monologue of asking Santa Claus for another puppy (made funny by the fact that Christmas had already passed), Violet began to swing to see how high she could go. She looked around the playground, watching a group of kids run around and play tag.

Violet's eyes caught the sight of one of her lunch ladies standing by the doors to get inside the school. She seemed to be in a very deep conversation with her teacher, Mrs. Epps. They both would shoot looks towards her and Bella, as if they were talking about them.

She slowed her swing down, dragging the bottom of her dress shoes through the wood chunks, now ignoring Bella's giggles.

Mrs. Epps made her way towards them, dodging child after child in an effort not to get knocked over. When she made it to her, she smiled, though it seemed strained. "Hey, V."

"Hi."

Bella sat her phone down in her lap, now watching the two talk. Her swing creaked as it slowed down. Everything seemed amplified. She noticed every little detail, from the wrinkle in Mrs. Epps' shirt to the sound of other first-graders' shoes digging into the grass.

"The nice lunch lady would like to talk to you, is that okay?"

Violet's eyes went over her teacher's shoulder to the lunch lady, who seemed blurry, though she assumed that was because of the distance. She narrowed her eyes, was the lunch lady wearing a puffy coat?

At Mrs. Epps' question, she gave a dull nod, dread creeping into her chest. Something felt off, like she was walking into a dangerous situation. Violet ignored this, and made her way to the lunch lady, though she made sure to drag her feet.

By the time she made it to the lunch lady, the red winter jacket she wore seemed the flicker. It went from being made from a cloth material to being feathers that shimmered under the sun. Confused, Violet tried to focus on the coat, but found that her vision refused to allow her to get a real look at it.

"Hello, dear," she gave her a smile, though it almost seemed evil. Her voice was scratchy itself, and Violet almost expected her to cough to clear it up. "You have made a mess in my cafeteria!"

"I did?" Responded Violet.

"Yes! Azela demands you clean it up!"

She frowned once more attempting to focus her eyes on the scarlet jacket. It didn't work, and just made her head hurt. Violet was sure she didn't make a mess (at least, she didn't remember doing so), but she was never known to be one to go against an authority figure. "Who's Azela?"

"I am!"

"Oh."

Azela put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Her nails were sharp and painted black, almost looking like talons. Violet swallowed, but still gave a small smile towards the lunch lady.

The two made their way towards the cafeteria. Azela kept making weird noises, like squawks and caws, and several times had said: "Yummy meal for Azela!" To say that Violet was uncomfortable would be an understatement.

When the two stepped into the cafeteria, Violet frowned. It was completely clean, with a janitor bucket and mop left in the corner. Did a janitor clean it before she got there?

"There!" Shrieked the lunch lady, pointing a taloned finger towards a small spot on one of the lunch tables, "Clean! Azela must prepare for a yummy demigod snack!"

Violet opened her mouth to question what a demigod was, but decided to just clean up the small stain and be on her way. Grabbing a napkin from a dispenser and blobbing some hand sanitizer from it, she cleaned until the spot went away.

Which was fairly quick.

Dropping the napkin in the trash, she turned her attention to Azela, who was in the kitchen. Her back was bent over a big boiling bucket of water, and she was pouring boxes of salt into said water.

"Miss?"

The lunch lady no longer looked like a lunch lady. Her uniform was ripped off, her hairnet was barely still on her head. Her crimson jacket was now wings, shimmering in the florescent light of the kitchen. And this time, her eyes allowed her to focus on it. Finding nothing else to do, Violet screamed.

Azela barely gave her a glance, "Stay there, demigod!" She shrieked, "Azela likes her food salty and cooked! We will wait for the water to boil!" With her hand, which, much to Violet's horror, was now actual black talons, she grabbed a handful of small salt packets and threw them straight into the water. Not even bothering to rip open the packages.

Violet booked it. Even with her small legs, she found herself quickly running out of the room. Her brown hair whipped behind her as she did so, with her dress shoes squeaking against the floor.

The sound of a loud shriek of anger came from within the cafeteria. Soon, the sound of flapping wings followed behind Violet, easily catching up to her small form. Panicked, Violet ran into the first open door she saw—the art room.

As she entered the room, she kicked the doorstop out of the way, causing the door to slam shut behind her.

Violet dunked behind the art teacher's desk, grabbing a pair of adult-scissors that were left discarded on the floor and curling herself against the wall.

There was pounding at the door, and what sounded like ten birds making loud noises as the lunch-lady-turned-monster attempted to break it. It went silent for a long time, and Violet almost popped her head up to see what happened.

Lucky her that she didn't, because the silence was followed by the sound of wood breaking and the door-busting in. She had to bite her tongue not to scream out, and instead curled further into the corner.

"Come out, come out, little demigod! Azela can smell you," and, to dramatize the situation, the bird-woman let out a loud, long sniff.

Azela's feet, which were also black talons, scraped across the floor. She continued to sniff like a bloodhound, occasionally letting out a caw or other noise when she thought she found her. She had thrown a bin filled with markers and crayons against the wall, believing her to be hiding behind it. Instead, it caused a rainbow of art-products to go flying across the room.

"Salt!" Azela shrieked, "All I can smell is salt—but I know you're here, demigod."

If Violet hadn't been hiding for her life, she would have mentioned it was her fault for using so much salt in her water, but she chose life over a sassy comment.

In anger, Azela began to wreck the room. She ripped art frames off of the walls, throwing to the floor with loud CRASH!es. A series of fourth-grade clay projects were laid out on the window-sill to dry, and she threw them all over the room—one, an apparent man sat in a chair, landed right beside Violet's hiding spot. The name MILES was written across the bottom of the sculpture in Sharpie.

After a loud series of squawks and human screams, she scraped her feet across the aluminum floor towards Violet. She came to flip the teacher's desk over, but instead screeched with happiness when she saw the cowering child.

She was terrified, tears slowly forming in her eyes as she realized that something bad was going to happen. She was only five, not old enough to see the true consequences, but she did understand one thing: This was not a good situation to be in. (And that she didn't want to be eaten.)

The bird-lady gripped her by the arm, yanking her up from her position on the floor. Her hands clutched around the scissors, wide, teary-eyes staring into the red of the woman before her.

"You put up a good fight, demigod," she hissed out, "but never has one managed to escape Azela! I will be feasting on you soon, all we need is some salt."

Now seeing what is left of the art room, Violet felt her mouth fall open. It was trashed, completely, with not a single thing but the desk left untouched. Even something as simple as the paper was ripped and left in shredded pieces.

Azela dragged her towards the exit door, glass shards crunching underneath her feet. She didn't want to follow, she wanted to go home and watch Disney movies with her dad and stay up past her bedtime watching him work.

She was crying now, big tears rolling down her red cheeks as she attempted to yank her arm out of her hands. Everything was getting weird again, her vision focusing on the smallest details—the way Azela's feathers moved with every moment, one of her toe-talons was chipped, and the fake plant broken in half in the corner, surrounded by stepped-on markers and broken glass.

The lady turned to her, mouth opening to most likely shriek something about how tasty she would be with salt. Everything moved in slow motion, and she didn't realize her arm was moving.

She screamed. Everything was moving at their normal speed, and she had a pair of scissors shoved within the mouth of Azela. She seemed shocked for a moment, eyes wide and mouth agape around the scissors, and then she went poof and exploded into a gigantic pile of yellow dust.

Violet fell to her knees, the scissors falling out of her hand and to the side of her. The dust fell around her, coating her body and the floor around her in a fine layer of it. She was still crying, sobs now bubbling up to the surface as her small figure shook.

She wasn't sure how long she stayed like that, a five-year-old surrounded by yellow and broken art supplies. Her mind had gone from hyper-focus to blank.

"Oh heavens!" Violet lifted her teary eyes to see the art teacher, Ms. Evans, stood in shock in the doorway. Her eyes flickered around, from the ruined art-room to the crying first-grader. "Miss Stark, what have you done?"

She was expelled.

Six-year-old Violet Stark sat in the back of her dad's car, the man sitting across from her, as Happy Hogan (their bodyguard and personal driver) drove her to her new school.

She reportedly went hysteric and completely recked a whole schoolroom (no one remembered Azela the lunch lady. They said she ran off on her own, leaving Mrs. Epps searching for her), the court claimed her a troubled kid and made her father cough up money for property damage. Luckily, Pepper managed to keep reporters off of it, so she wouldn't be known as Tony Stark's Troubled Kid. Instead, she was just Tony Stark's Bastard Kid, but she didn't know what bastard meant, so she didn't care.

That was one of the ways of saying she took a long break from school and was now a second-grader after spending the three months of first grade in a Therapy School, where she was taught not to let her anger get ahold of her.

"Remember," Tony Stark, her father in all his glory, said, "no destroying classrooms."

"Yeah," she nodded her head, her bangs flopping against her forehead, "I know. I hated it a ferapy school."

She had trouble pronouncing her th's, to the point that her dad had hired a specialist just to fix it. It wasn't working well.

Violet wanted to say she didn't do it. She had learned early on it was stupid to do so, no one else could have. She was found crying, bloody (she cut her knee against the glass, it left a small scar) and covered in what they called 'yellow glitter'. Still, she at least wanted her father to know that it wasn't her. That she wasn't the child they claimed her to be.

At least one good thing came out of it. Her father started paying a lot more attention to her. Sarah, a girl she met during her biweekly anger management group therapy sessions, told her that it was probably because someone told him she acted out to get his attention.

Sarah was ten, and she said that she had something called Oppositional Defiant Disorder. It basically made her angry all the time, at least, according to Sarah.

It was also there she got diagnosed with ADHD, which, in the very nice words of her therapist: "Could have also caused your anger." It also explained those moments when all Violet could do was focus on small or insignificant details.

"Make friends," her dad continued, "make a lot of friends. I was very popular, and you should have no problems doing the same, but, of course," he pushed down his sunglasses and give her his typical I'm just joking smile, "you are nowhere as cool as me."

"I'm not?"

Tony shook his head, "No, no, you, Violet," he pointed at her with a very serious look, "are beyond cooler."

"Really?"

"Yes, as much as it hurts my ego to admit. I have a very cool child."

The car ride continued like that, Violet and her dad joking and Tony's very dry sense of humor. He had also gotten her a sugary juice box from the minifridge in the car (very strange, but she didn't think about it, there had just always been one there), even though Pepper had said no sugar before lunch.

Of course, that was the day that everything changed.

hello, new story, I should probably stop.

I've been cooking up Violet for months now, beyond to excited to write her!

Please leave reviews and stuff, love to see what you guys think and if you enjoy the story so far. Criticism welcome, please no flames!