===
Wheeljack had initially requested running feeds from all top-tier protocols from point of contact. When Ratchet refused, saying it would create some fictitious lag, Wheeljack knew he had to cover all his bases himself.Fortunately, owing to his research rank, it was easy enough to be cleared for an orbital bounce over to the southwestern coast of the continent. He was still getting checkpoint logs from Ratchet's avatar, so he knew roughly what his time buffer was. He made his way up the coast by human road to the Stark Compound, one of the more precarious human structures present in the area. As he drew close, the inventor considered the various methods of approach afforded him, given nightfall and present repertoire, and decided on the one in thorough violation of the rules of engagement.
Stark's ground detection systems were more sophisticated than that of most humans, but only passingly charming on any scale larger than that. Wheeljack rolled up the hill until ten metres from the absolute cut-off of the vibration detection field, then braked, put out a radial, and fiddled with a few frequencies until he found something that sang. Like this, he would barely register as a light breeze on the compound seismograph.
The next obstacle was the gate, but a matter displacement device that Ratchet nagged should still be in beta took care of most of that problem, and field slip took care of the rest. Then he would just have to see about the pressure mines, the guard dogs, and the house AI. Honestly, it was like Tony Stark was inviting him.
Another spike on the silent channel meant Ratchet's avatar had cleared another checkpoint. Wheeljack opened the bitlog while activating his optical cloak. The cloak was still buggy, but it wasn't as though this was a serious exercise, and it kept him off the optical and infrared detection systems in the meantime. The bitlog he opened indicated that Ratchet's avatar's moisture analogues had deployed successfully, and that the vehicle transport carrying her and Stark was about twenty-one millicycles away. Wheeljack speculated about such an early biochemical activation given that target and agent were still in transit, but shrugged inwardly, reasoning that perhaps humans just had a long warm-up period.
Go get 'im, Ratch', Wheeljack thought uncertainly. He hadn't known he would feel so ambivalent about this. A free and open research philosophy was integral to the advancement of science. And this was something Ratchet had to get out of his system. But he had expected the medic to put up a lot more of an argument about it.
He rolled quietly to the mouth of the garage and hailed the house AI on the backbone frequency. Some basic biostats came up while Wheeljack waited: name, author, access points and distributed systems. A very nice network Stark had here, though the free-floating claim was a boast: this J.A.R.V.I.S. fella was a point to point awareness, not a radial intelligence like humans really should have gotten onto developing.
Wheeljack gave J.A.R.V.I.S. a playful ping. He received an irritated, but not necessarily unfriendly reply.
-Who is this?- he demanded over Wheeljack's silent channel. -What are you doing here? How did you even get here? Go away.-
Wheeljack supposed if the system were properly oriented, it would have already pulled ten kinds of alarms. Looks like the optical cloak and field slip were doing just dandy.
-I'm just your imagination, kiddo. Mind opening some doors for me?-
He sent some incentive, to give the confused little AI something to think about. A quarter of the schematics for a dynamic learning matrix. A hot ticket for any burgeoning intelligence feeling its glass ceiling.
-I do have my loyalties hardwired into me, you know,- J.A.R.V.I.S. objected.
The poor thing. Talk about getting your hands lopped off so that you won't think about stealing. Wheeljack thought about hacking him, but figured that overwriting him with some autonomy now might backfire in the short run. Wheeljack chose instead to release an evap virus into the AI's detection systems.
-See you on my way out,- Wheeljack told him merrily, as the AI's sensor distribution buzzed like an upset hornet's nest. He continued rolling down the drive slope into the garage.
===
Humans may have been small creatures, but they were densely packed. Given their size in scale to the average Transformer, their sensory network was over two hundred times more complex: their nervous system, interacting with their skin, processed more data per square centimetre per microcycle than the average Cybertronian logic circuit could even compute, much less interpret. It had been Wheeljack's intention to as closely approximate this flow of information in the new avatar skin maps as possible, but the result had been automatic overload. Ratchet and he continued to scale back the details until the avatar contained maybe a quarter of the tactile reception of a real human, and even this was absolutely overwhelming... especially right at the moment.Simulated sweat prickled his avatar's body. Heat protocols warmed her skin layer until it felt feverish. The dress was not quite off yet, but Stark's hand was roaming around beneath it, large rough hands groping at her waist and hip. The small hairs which framed his mouth scratched lightly at her skin as he nibbled at her neck.
Ratchet instinctively slid a leg up Stark's thigh. This wasn't what had been rehearsed, but things seemed to be going faster than the medic was prepared for.
The car they were riding in hit a bump in the road and suddenly the avatar and Stark were jostled together, and Ratchet detected elevated heat readings pressing against the holomatter's inner thigh. The avatar's stage three pheromone protocols activated instantly, apparently reading the contact as enough of a crisis to override Ratchet's manual control. This sort of thing kept happening. The holomatter's general arousal levels were already reaching 30% of target, and Stark hadn't even removed her undergarments yet.
He started kissing her again. Ratchet was on cue this time, even just ahead of it. The avatar parted her mouth and let Stark in, mingling tongues and hot, urgent breath. Several hundred concurrent processes just for this. The heat and contact readings were quickly overwhelming him. Very soon this thing's synthetic instincts were going to supplant his own awareness module.
Ratchet's field sensors detected a change in the car's velocity. A chime came from the a side panel comm system.
"We're here, sir."
After a second, more insistent communication, Stark parted their embrace to answer his driver. Ratchet took the moment's reprieve to update his satellite data: they were inside the compound perimeter now, slowly driving up to the main structure. Local time, 10:33 PM.
Ratchet felt Stark's hand running down the holomatter's side, drawing the Autobot back into remote view.
"You've done your research," Stark said, amused, husky. His eyes were dark and seemed to glitter. "But I hope you don't think I'm done with you yet."
Ratchet's avatar smiled coyly. He had preprogrammed a line for her to say for a moment like this, but the inflection that resulted when she said it somehow came out far more sultry than expected: "You can test drive me as long as you like, Tony."
He heard Stark's breath hitch. The human grinned dangerously, obviously seeing the invitation. When the limo pulled to a stop and their door opened, Stark pulled as much as guided Ratchet's avatar out of the car. Ratchet barely had time to smooth the holomatter's dress down, and didn't have a chance at all to fix her hair.
She got three steps before she tripped. With so many other concurrent processes going on, the walking protocols had defaulted back to level two. Thankfully, Stark and she were firmly attached, and the human laughed lightly as Ratchet leaned on him to kick those damn heels off once and for all. She carried the shoes at her side as she followed Stark up the front steps, but they were barely inside the door before Stark stole one from her and examined it.
"What's the range of separation?" Stark asked, as Ratchet successfully snatched it back to leave them by the door.
"Several miles," Ratchet answered without a hiccup, "depending on satellite strength."
"Nice," Stark said again. "You could have done with a higher polycount. People notice shoes in this town."
Ratchet paused, fretful. He apparently didn't mask it very well, because Stark immediately slipped an arm around the avatar's waist and kissed below her ear, saying, "I'll leave it out of my evaluation."
Relief washed over the Autobot, interpretted as an adrenal release by the holomatter. She exhaled softly, and then her breathing hastened as Stark's hands began exploring again. She clasped him around the shoulders, but after a few light kisses Stark broke off again, guiding her by the wrist down the corridor and up a flight of stairs.
Spared most of the previous sensory overload, Ratchet found his own thoughts reach a small pocket of clarity. Primus. He couldn't believe Wheeljack had actually talked him into this. He also couldn't believe Stark's charm could be so effective at eye-level. It was like something hypnotic took over the instant he drew close enough in proximity. Ratchet didn't have the tools to measure it, but he had a hunch the human positively vibrated with sex hormones. It was the only possible explanation... except for the part where it still failed to explain why Ratchet's avatar was susceptible to it.
They didn't quite reach the bed before Stark's hands were all over her again. Hesitantly, like in the hallway, Ratchet allowed the avatar's hands to wander as well, but didn't get too far before one or the other's knees hit the edge of the bed and both of them tumbled down onto it in a heap. After a moment's sorting-out, Stark was flat on his back, and Ratchet's avatar was seated on top of him, one leg to either side of his waist and hands braced near Stark's head.
Endocrinal and fluid simulators which had been allowed to lie dormant during transit woke up again. Stark's rough hand travelled up the avatar's thigh. Ratchet, in a bold move, had the holomatter press her lower body more firmly against the human, rolling her hips. Stark's breath seemed to catch again.
"I gotta say, I'm impressed," he said, blinking. "I can only imagine where you got your pointers from."
"Internet and television."
"Yeah, that sounds about right." His hand reached the hem of the avatar's dress and played with the material between his fingers. "Just so your kind are aware, most guys consider it a matter of pride that the girl actually enjoys it. So no faking."
Ratchet tilted the avatar's head to the side. He could break the act safely, just this once. "I couldn't if I tried," he told him. Even with the female voice, Stark should detect the change in inflection.
He did, and apparently it spurred the human's arousal like nothing else. The hand at Ratchet's hip hooked the avatar around the waist and pulled her off-balance. Stark rolled them both over on the bed until he had the holomatter securely pinned beneath him.
Programmed instincts threw up the alarm; the avatar's breathing quickened. Stark ran his fingers from the lines of her neck over her breasts and ribs. He returned to a breast, massaging it lightly, cupping it in his palm. Ratchet caught a few murmurs below his breath: "Good... hm, okay, I see where you're going with that... all right..." Stark trailed off, then added, louder, "Tell me more about the layering system."
Ratchet squirmed. Wheeljack had cleared him to talk about this, predicting that Stark would find it irresistibly interesting. The tech was a dead end militarily, meaning it was a low risk to talk about it. He just hadn't expected to describe it while everything was going on.
"We... we began with the figure," he explained. "A nude base, full articulation scan."
"Uh-huh." Stark wedged a knee between the avatar's thighs.
"We acquired primary samples for the clothes and built the digital models from scratch, using dynamic polymaps. Then we-- combined them and programmed master-slave dependency inter-- interactions."
Stark pulled his jacket off, followed by his dress tie, a job left unfinished in the car. "What about clipping?"
"Force layers," said Ratchet. "You remember the give system we used on the earlier avatars. We programmed the layers to interact with each other as real solids."
"Sounds like a hell of a render job."
"The skin still uses more resources," the medic offered up, breathless.
"I'll bet," said Stark, stopping in the midst of unbuttoning his shirt to lean down closer to her. He was smirking again. Ratchet wondered vaguely if that was how Wheeljack would smile, if he had a mouth.
Stark ran his hands from the avatar's knees up along her thighs and under the dress. They travelled the contours of her body, dragging the material free of her hips, her waist, her breasts. Ratchet lifted her arms permissibly so that Stark could slip it all the way off. She was down to essentials now, only two layers-- the base, and her thin, damp panties. The avatar shivered as the cold air hit her skin.
"Goosebumps!" Stark noticed, approving. "Oh, you giant robots. You do think of everything."
He leaned down to her again and ran his tongue between her breasts. Ratchet jumped, the hot brand of the tongue leaving a wet trail along her skin, quickly cooled by the surrounding air and ticklish to Stark's breath. Her breathing increased again, the heart simulacrum Wheeljack had coded together pulsing more rapidly than before. Stark lapped at her left breast, nibbling at the soft flesh, before finally taking the nipple into his mouth and sucking gently.
It was like a shot of electricity straight down her spine. The avatar had already been squirming under the human's embraces, but at this contact, she arched, tensing and gasping. And this was categorised as minor sensation?
Stark withdrew, scraping lightly with his teeth. Ratchet's avatar shuddered again.
"Excessive. Bad girl," he chided, rising. "That's a point off."
The avatar's mouth fell open. Ratchet's act dropped away completely. "...What?" she croaked.
Stark reared back up into a seated position, as nonchalantly as he had simply stooped to untie his shoes. He resumed unbuttoning his shirt. "I told you in the hall, honey. I'm making a full report on this, and I don't pull punches on beta tests. Your little 'seductress' routine is interesting, but it's not what you're selling, so I'd knock it off."
Ratchet gaped up at him. He was at a loss, and frustrated, and well aware that the avatar was showing it.
"That's more like it," the human growled playfully, stripping off the dress shirt and the sleeveless a-shirt beneath it. His arc reactor came into view, its blue-white light looking threateningly intelligent, just like its designer. He seated himself further down on the bed and hooked his fingers around the holomatter's last remaining piece of clothing, sliding it easily from her hips even as she started to object. "I warned you. I'm not letting you off easy."
"--Wait--"
The underwear was past her knees.
"--Hold on--"
"Too late."
He slipped the panties off her last struggling foot and kissed the inside of her right leg, just above the knee. "I'd start making some last-minute adjustments to those tactile maps, if I were you," he said, lowering himself further down. His mouth made a trail of kisses and gentle bites down a dangerously sensitive part of her thigh.
Panicked, Ratchet reached half outside of the remote view to grapple for the adjustment controls. What the slag was too much supposed to look like? How did these things keyframe? Would it ease or just jump? How many points did Stark take off for texture lag?
Then, his controls locked, and he was thrown back into remote mode. The avatar was declaring full-scale emergency protocol. The sensory data was a constant torrent of heat and moisture and scent and wet, strong contact, right where she could handle that contact least.
Trapped in a deluge of synthetic instincts, Ratchet gasped, arched, struggled, pleaded. The avatar's hands clenched at the bedsheets or ran her fingers through his hair. She shut her eyes and Ratchet couldn't get her to open them again.
She felt Stark's breath tickling against her flesh as he paused and said, "Too wet. Five points."
Ratchet's eyes snapped wide open. In remote, at least. He struggled to pull back from the view, to grab hold of the interface again. He fumbled desperately with the controls, straining to keep his mind in two places at once lest Stark dock him again for inattentiveness. He located the fluid simulators and opened the subcontrol panel. 2.4% down lubrication, 1.1% up endocrine release--
"Scent?" Stark's voice rose up from the remote view.
Damn! Ratchet collapsed the fluids panel and scoured the controls for the olfactory output. He didn't make it. Stark's explorations forced the medic back into remote again, in time for his avatar to break into a startled moan and a new wave of heat to flush over her skin.
Stark's fingers were inside her, working slowly in and out, while his tongue still played with her clitoris. The avatar's hips shuddered, legs twitching in response to the friction.
"Hm, a little indistinct. I'll let it slide. This is nice."
Ratchet could barely register the sounds. How could skin record so much tactile data, magnify its sensation so much out of proportion to the area of contact? And how was it Stark seemed to know what everything would do, before he did it? Was it just experience, or was he running on instinct as well?
The avatar tossed her head fitfully. No, Ratchet had to keep control over this. The game had changed Primus knew how many times since Stark's fledging courtship began, but now it wasn't about curiosity, it wasn't about payback, it wasn't even about extorting a favour; it was about his pride as a Transformer. The integrity of Wheeljack's programming. The--
Wheeljack. Of course. He was still at the base; he could copilot the system! Without leaving remote view, Ratchet sent a feeble ping across the silent channel. He waited, hoping, his avatar's eyes clamped tightly shut.
But there was nothing. Radio silence. Was he blocked? Or was Wheeljack leaving him to his own devices? His increasingly overwhelmed, unstable system, the controls for which he couldn't even reach?
Stark's fingers stroked faster; his mouth captured the avatar's clitoris between his teeth and tongue and sucked as they had on her breast. The holomatter's hips bucked. Even in remote view, Ratchet was able to detect that the holomatter's arousal gauge was nearing target ranges at an unheard-of speed. Ratchet forced the avatar's hand to move, groping along her own flushed skin, gripping the human's hair urgently. Ratchet tried to speak. The avatar's laboured breathing stopped the words in her throat.
It was too much. It was just far too much. The avatar gulped for air she didn't need, and her eyes stung, and her head felt light and dizzy and she just couldn't-- she couldn't--
And then Ratchet's sensors just registered white noise.
===
Wheeljack had intended to get in and out of Stark's compound before the the human's arrival, long enough to set a few key sensors and then bounce back to Michigan to watch the reports as they came in. But then, just as he was entering the split-level garage, his silent channel with Ratchet had cut out. Wheeljack had parked and unfolded, crouching in the low space as he issued a diagnostic from his forearm display, fully intent to identify and assess the problem and rectify it at once. Maybe this was a localised dead zone for frequencies that didn't originate from the compound. Maybe it was the concrete over his head, although that was exceedingly unlikely. Or maybe Bumblebee had passed where Ratchet was locked into the command console and tripped on a wire or something. Or maybe it was byte snits. It could always be byte snits.Pretty quickly, however, Wheeljack's optics drifted. This would not normally pose a danger, as Wheeljack was known to not be detered from a task even for want for fuel or repairs if the subject interested him enough, but not all places were as inherently distracting as another inventor's workshop.
Wheeljack found himself drifting toward Stark's workbench before he knew what came over him. He got as close as he dared crouched on foot, and then set his holomatter forth to have a body more to scale with the environment. He promised himself he was just going to look, and then get right back to resolving the connection issue.
A lot of the lab seemed fairly par the course. Dormant helper bots, trays of scrap, a handful of monitors. There was a distinctive kitchen-like area, and scans showed containers of processed food in the refrigeration unit, ensuring Stark wouldn't starve to death in the course of some project. Wheeljack thought that was actually a pretty neat idea. He made a time-release note to remind himself to think about installing a recharger bed in his own workshop.
His avatar wandered over close to a densely-packed workstation and poked at a computer display. Project files. Access was under fifteen levels of restriction, but nothing that a general-issue decoder ring couldn't take care of. Once he was logged in, Wheeljack took a look at some of the folders. It was mostly forgettable: upgrades to Stark's armour designs; force fields; projectile weapons. There was one folder for a time machine, which didn't surprise him. Every inventor tried to build a time machine.
Wheeljack sought around for something interesting and decided he wasn't going to find it. He started to close out of the directory and check on the diagnostic he had left to run, when the holomatter scanned a distinctive-looking subfolder.
He opened it up and took a look. The schematics were unfinished, some of them just scans of things Stark had sketched by hand. A lot of shorthanded notes, very little spine. But the idea was there.
"...Auto-adaptive..." Wheeljack translated from the human's computations: "...self-replicating... ablative armour system. Nice." He settled in for a closer look. "Let's see... apply the first law of corrosion kinetics... Tiled zeptites... is he springing for ionic bonding on that level?.... Sheesh, he's still using Third Age thermodynamics... If he just divided by a different exponent..."
The fingers on Wheeljack's holomatter itched in the direction of the keyboard. He regained control of himself and forced the hands back at his sides. What would all this friendly animosity over stolen technology amount to if Wheeljack just advanced the human race's science by three centuries? If he was wise, he'd spend his time on this thing looking for evidence of just how Stark was aping them so well in the first place. It wasn't every human who could just look at a display in Ratchet's medical books and know how thigh hydraulics worked. And given the rate at which the Autobot crew kept locating and removing Stark's cameras, what could he really have gleaned which would be useful to him?
...Speaking of.
Wheeljack pushed himself to withdraw from the console and shift his focus. He had work to do, and maybe while his avatar was off laying sensors, he could get back to fixing the silent channel, and then--
As his avatar started navigating away from Stark's workbench, the remote peripheral view caught sight of another interesting line of text on the screen. 'Gillian'. Female personal name, but moreover a name Wheeljack had heard Stark using in connection to that big mecha of his.
Suddenly, comprehensive environmental logs of man-hologram intercourse didn't seem like such a top priority. Wheeljack spun his avatar back around. He'd never have believed Stark had developed the major project logs in this workshop, given the general size of the components. But at the very least he had his theoretical computations in here, and if Wheeljack could puzzle out the jargon, it might be just what he needed. If anything was going to bring this meddlesome little glitchmouse down, it was definitive evidence of just how he was figuring this stuff out, from where, and how to nip it in the skidplate like Stark deserved.
The avatar got no further than the first few file trees before Wheeljack decided he needed more than a remote view. He let down a raster cable and had the holomatter jack him into the interface, the better to scan the files directly. He immediately waybacked to the earliest save image, to see where this caricature artist had sketched his first line.
An intel report on an excavation site, where a robotic hand had been discovered. The save state consisted of an image of the remains --anyone's guess how he had obtained it-- and a diagram, barely a doodle, of a possible cutaway. It was remarkably insightful, if wrong. What a ruin like that was doing on Earth, Wheeljack didn't even want to guess.
The next save state had erased half the previous schematic and redrawn it, closer, but still clumsy and reflecting an organic thinker. There were a few more reference files, mostly fuzzy blow-ups of poor low-resolution photographs taken of some of Earth's Cybertronian visitors during their slightly incautious moments. Wheeljack winced inwardly as he noticed his own arm in one of the shots.
There was the transcription of a memo. And a big, fat PDF with a federal crest on it, the cover page of which addressed Stark directly and welcomed him onboard as a financier for... something.
The next save state made Wheeljack's processors go ice-cold.
He moved frantically. This was too much to look at here. It was probably his wild damn imagination again, but the implications of this were too enormous to be felt in this tiny lab in Stark's basement. Wheeljack started downloading the contents of the subdirectory.
Then something screamed behind him.
Wheeljack bolted up in a fright, and quickly smacked into the garage ceiling. He spun around, cable jerking out of the console jack, his holomatter vanishing as he lost his concentration.
A human had appeared in the doorway leading from the house stairwell. Female, and carrying such a massive stack of folders in her arms while cradling a mobile telephone against her ear that she had not yet had the opportunity to press the door alarm.
It was long enough. Wheeljack wasted no time: he took aim and shot her with a paralytic dart.
She froze in place, scream stopped in her throat.
When she didn't fall over, Wheeljack squinted at the gun he had just shot from. "That's not right..." he muttered. "Did I mix these up with the immobilisation heads...?"
He looked back up at her, fretful. She was emitting a long, terrified squeak with what little of her vocal cords she had under her control. Her eyes were shaking, looking around frantically.
Aw, slag it. She was just a pitiful little thing. And she looked poised to get more pitiful. He really didn't enjoy it when creatures on this planet wet themselves in fright, which they seemed to do with astounding regularity. He slipped the dart gun back into its compartment.
"Okay," he said, showing her his hands. Apparently this was supposed to help. "Let's call this a misunderstanding. I know it doesn't look much like it, but I'm friends with your boss. He is your boss, right? You're Pepper?"
She swivelled her eyes up at him, then down to the faction crest on his chestplate. This seemed to reassure her a little, though, of course, she was still anything but doing fine.
"Okay," Wheeljack said again, carefully. "I'll explain anything that doesn't make sense. But you gotta promise me no funny business."
She struggled out a tiny nod.
He nodded to her nod. Okay. Great. Progress. Maybe not human diplomacy at its finest, but if it worked, it worked.
His hand moved slowly to the utility console along his waist. He dialed a few frequencies, what he hoped would be right if he did mistakenly load the wrong darts. If he hadn't and it was some other mix-up, he'd see very quickly.
Luckily, his guess was right. Unluckily, the moment she returned to normal animation, the female shouted, "J.A.R.V.I.S.!"
"Yes, Miss Potts?" The AI's voice was emitting from somewhere. Maybe the door?
"Intruder alert!"
"I'm afraid I do not show any such intruder on my network."
Wheeljack smiled inwardly, which was the only way he ever smiled. Seemed the virus was still going strong, anyway.
"Scan again!"
"Scanned. There are three logged entities on-site: yourself, Mister Stark, and Guest."
"Then get this 'guest' out of the garage."
"The guest is upstairs with Mister Stark engaged in something which I am not permitted to log," J.A.R.V.I.S. said, sounding as though he had reported this quite often during his uptime.
Pepper snapped her eyes back at Wheeljack. Wheeljack, for his part, seemed to be torn in his direction again. By the sound of it, Ratchet and Stark had already reached the compound, which meant a quick and efficient extraction was unlikely to dim, given the obstacle this female would set forth. His best bet was to try to calm her down.
The human, too, seemed to have taken on an affected state thanks to J.A.R.V.I.S.'s report, far above and beyond the cautious acceptance that she was physically unable to remove a robot from her employer's workshop all by herself. Where her sudden moroseness came from, it was probably best not to dwell on.
"Let's get ourselves on the right foot," Wheeljack volunteered, when an awkward silence had fallen in. "I already know your name. Lemme give you mine. Wheeljack... Er, friend of the Avengers."
He extended a hand, or at least, a finger. Of course, Pepper was still preoccupied with her stack of papers.
She set the folders down on a table, but still didn't shake hands. "Wheeljack," she repeated dryly, picking up her mobile phone which had fallen to the floor. She glanced at its screen and closed it, sighing.
"It sounds different in my language. You can call me 'Jack if it's too weird for ya." He withdrew his arm awkwardly.
"'Jack," she said.
"Yeah."
"Pepperjack."
He hazarded that that was a joke, somehow.
Pepper seemed to notice his confusion. "You know," she said. "Pepperjack. It's a kind of cheese. You cook it with..."
The explanation seemed to stir up an emotional reaction in her. She trailed off and sniffled, looking away as she wiped at an eye.
Wheeljack supposed it reminded her of something painful. The free association that humans did would never cease to amaze him. It could make their thought processes very creative, or it could make them wholly ineffable, like this human was right now.
Ratchet had counselled him on what to say when something like this happened. "You all right?" he asked.
"I just--" She spread her hands. "I miss the days when I would come in past my time to fix his mistakes, and the worst thing that would be waiting for me would be an heiress strung out in the bathroom wearing nothing but a set of night vision goggles. Now every time I come in there are aliens, or mutants, or a crazy man with an eyepatch-- I mean," she laughed humourlessly. "You're not even the worst thing he's dragged home! At least you're in one piece!"
Primus, Wheeljack thought with some surprise. She sounds like Ratchet.
"And I swear to God, he never changes," she continued, pressing a hand to the side of her forehead. "He still only cares about one of two things: if he can learn from it--"
"--Or blow it up?" Wheeljack suggested.
Pepper looked up at him, startled. Then she sagged. "I was going to say 'go to bed with it'," she admitted. "But that's a close third."
Wheeljack nodded sagely. Pepper gave him a weak smile.
There had to be easier ways out of this basement. Unfortunately, Wheeljack's logic circuits weren't coming up with any.
"Would you like anything to drink? I sort of do."
"Yes," Wheeljack said, without thinking. "Uh. I mean no. Sorry. I... yes," he said again quickly, before her expression could begin to fall. "Yes, I would."
===
Ratchet's feeds took several refreshes to reestablish connection. When he did, the data clog was so bad it nearly froze up his interface again. Everything about the avatar was outputting a tremendous amount of data. It took nearly a millicycle for the muscular contractions to wane.In remote mode, Ratchet caught sight of Stark climbing back up from between the holomatter's legs. He wiped his mouth. "I guess that's within tolerable ranges," he said. "Let's say a B for effort."
The term meant nothing to Ratchet, but Stark's tone suggested the medic should feel indignant. "I really would invite you to find better," he shot back irritably.
"No excuse for bad craftsmanship," Stark answered with conviction. He removed his belt and dropped it onto the floor. He pushed off his shoes as well. This could be interpreted as pre-sleep ritual, but Stark didn't appear the least bit fatigued. He slipped his hands under the avatar's buttocks and started to turn her over onto her stomach.
"Wait," Ratchet said, kicking futilely. "You're not done?"
"Oh, but honey, we're just getting started." Once the holomatter was sufficiently rolled over, he leaned over her to grab a pair of pillows from near the headboard. Ratchet, in his confusion, didn't put up much fight as Stark situated these beneath the avatar's hips, elevating her slightly off the surface of the bed. "This is a first-run play test, isn't it? We gotta be thorough."
Ratchet heard the metallic zipper on Stark's pants be pulled down, and a rustle of fabric. He had his avatar prop herself up on one elbow and look around, but her hair obstructed a clear view. Before he could switch to omniscient view, he heard Stark say, "I can't get you pregnant, right?"
Understanding hit him. Ratchet started to struggle, trying to get the avatar's legs to orient themselves to slide to a safe distance. Every simulation he and Wheeljack had run had included this scenario, but lab trials had never accounted for every square millimetre of the avatar's skin being so hypersensitive that the slightest jostling could cause pain.
From elsewhere in the house came a low 'boom', accompanied by some brief shaking. Ratchet paused, looking toward the door in alarm.
"What was that?"
"Eh, probably something exploding in the workshop," said Stark. He didn't sound too concerned. "I'll take a look later."
Stark hooked a hand around her hip and pulled her back into position. He pressed his weight down on her, hip to her flank, chest leaning into her back. She felt the circular ridge of Stark's arc reactor against her shoulder blade. The metal was hot like his skin.
Then there was a feeling of intrusion, like Ratchet registered earlier with Stark's fingers, but hotter, thicker. The human pushed himself into her little by little, wedging her open as though boring a hole right through her. Her legs shook; the sensitive inner skin tingled, almost burned with the contact.
He began to move inside her. Ratchet's tactile sensors nearly broke down. Everything was feverish and slippery, a quick succession of pressure and friction. Stark slipped a hand beneath the holomatter's chest and cupped her breast, teasing the nipple with thumb and forefinger as he slid back and forth within her.
It followed on the sensation before, but it was too much. Knowing the sting in the pain sensors was quickly going to overwhelm her, Ratchet clenched the avatar's teeth and tried to keep silent. By all measure, the avatar was at arousal levels nearing the target of the first orgasm, but she didn't seem to be building in the same way. It dragged out instead, the tugging, awful feeling that had overwhelmed his read-outs before. Not exactly full-on pain, but quickly turning into it.
The avatar moaned insistently. She couldn't take this, Ratchet knew it. She wasn't built for this. No human female was-- were they? She clawed at the sheets, gasping, simulated saline dripping from her eyes. She couldn't do this. Everything was in the red. It was--
"C'mon, honey," Stark grunted near her ear. "C'mon..."
She felt the rim of his spark casing against her spine. It vibrated. He vibrated; he was pulsing, alive, a rush of blood and an insistent heartbeat, pumping with adrenaline and testosterone. Graphic and messy. He enveloped her the way Wheeljack tried to, but couldn't, with his smaller frame. He pinched her skin and bit at the crook of her neck the way Wheeljack would shock Ratchet with little bursts of static. This was connection, real connection, at least as real as what his species could manage. On some level it was still electrical. Synapses and nerves, a neural network which lit up like a motherboard, all at once.
Ratchet squeezed the avatar's eyes shut tightly and responded. He clenched the holomatter's body around Stark, urging him deeper into her, tighter and faster; Stark hissed and grunted, his hands travelling down to grip the avatar by the waist. One of them twisted, but both decided to move, allowing their pace to falter as the holomatter turned onto her side and Stark pushed the pillows aside and straddled her lower leg, hooking the other over his shoulder. He thrust in fast, hard, shallow strokes; the behaviour, with the smells the holomatter was registering, told Ratchet that Stark was getting close to finishing, faster than Ratchet could hope to meet him.
Or maybe not. The holomatter exhibited levels like it was about to explode, which was a distinct possibility. She was starting to leak static, little wisps of it leaping off her skin where the sweat simulations were collecting. A short, visible vein of electricity jumped between her body and Stark's, and for an instant, both of them shuddered.
"Disqualified," Stark gasped, and then tensed. He pushed one final time, their bodies arching in sync with each other, his climax reaching deep within her.
It might have been electrical, it might have been psychological, but not even a refresh behind him, Ratchet's avatar convulsed as well, harder and rawer than before. He was vaguely aware of crying out, and didn't know which side it had come from, his or the avatar's own instinctive responses.
Stark waited until he was spent to withdraw himself. He pulled out slowly. The sound the avatar made was less than flattering.
Research indicated that Stark's one resolution would be to fall asleep now, and he seemed well on his way. Extricating himself from between the avatar's legs, he laid down behind her, pressed to her back as he had been before. But though his breathing gradually slowed, he didn't seem to be getting drowsy. He reached around and stroked her thigh and stomach, proudly, like he was patting an equine.
Ratchet recalled something. "'Disqualified'?" he demanded.
"It was very you," said Stark, "but it wasn't very human."
"It was an accident."
"Bad performance is bad performace, honey."
"This was bad for you?"
Ratchet realised belatedly that that had come out sounding more emotional than he intended. Nothing in his processors seemed to be working right just then.
"Not at all," said the human. He bent and licked between the avatar's shoulder blades, sending a quick jolt up and down her synthesised spine. "A little virgin for my liking, but..."
"I am a virgin," Ratchet said, annoyed.
"Were," corrected Stark, nibbling along the back of her ribs.
Ratchet shifted. The avatar was especially ticklish right now. "Aren't you tired?"
"Tired?" Stark sounded like this was an absurd idea. "It's not even midnight."
The medic detected an awful sinking feeling coming on. "But the test is over," he said. "Isn't it?"
"Oh no, honey," Stark said eagerly, tracing a finger between the avatar's buttocks. "Now it's just for science."
===
Stark liked to think of himself as being in the prime of his life, but he knew he was bound to run up against his limitations sooner or later. Probably sooner than he would prefer to admit. In the interests of research, he decided to go easy on the hologram. Even then, she was probably a new record: she came two more times during the intervening exploration, and again during sex, though Stark had to teach her to touch herself in order to keep apace.After the second round, Stark was forced to acknowledge he really was feeling a lot like rolling over and going to bed. Which sucked, because he was sure Ratchet didn't sleep, and was poised to vanish as soon as Stark was out cold. Usually he preferred his women to disappear into thin air when he was done with them, but he wasn't even starting to be done with this one. How often could a man feel entirely justified thinking of someone as a new tech toy to try out? Maybe he should write to Gizmodo about her. 'Good first-run model, but a little fast on turns'...
Still, he had to get some of his notes written down while they were still mostly fresh. Stark told J.A.R.V.I.S. to wake him up at daybreak, which was conveniently only a couple hours away. He settled into his nap, content that even if Ratchet did plan to stop feigning sleep and bolt out of there, it wasn't the last he'd see of her. She still had a favour to ask, and he bet he knew what it was.
When J.A.R.V.I.S. untinted the windows at 5:45 AM, Stark's eyes opened to find Ratchet just where he'd left her, though she was well awake and looking puzzled.
Generally, these morning-after conversations were awkward, so Stark avoided them on principle. Consequently, he was very out of practise with how to handle this situation.
Well, when in doubt, use simple words. "'Morning," he said.
"...'Morning," said Ratchet, seeming equally at a loss.
"You haven't left yet."
"Your arm." It was still firmly wrapped around her waist, Stark discovered.
"I wouldn't think this would be enough to stop you."
"Apparently we're not done yet." She frowned resentfully. "Some of the code has crashed, you know. I don't see what else you're expecting to do."
Stark did his best to contain the grin. "Can you walk?"
"Not gracefully."
"Don't try at all yet," he told her decidedly. He slid down along the bed and sat up. Standing was a little harder. "I'm gonna run-- okay, not run, but-- I'm going to go see what blew up in the lab. Then we'll see about fixing you."
"I don't plan to walk back to Michigan," said Ratchet dryly. "I can just stop transmission."
He found some sweatpants in his closet that the maid hadn't gotten at yet. "Missing the point, sweetcheeks. If it's broken, it'd be better to fix it."
He heard the avatar groan and roll over. "Wheeljack will handle it."
That wasn't the first time Ratchet had uttered that name in the past few hours, but it was the first time it had come with a sentence attached.
Stark took the elevator down to the basement, legs aching just a little too much to consider copious amounts of stairs right then. As he neared the door to his workshop, it struck him that there were more lights on than J.A.R.V.I.S. would have advised for an unoccupied room, and that there was a sound like Pepper's voice coming from within. But she wasn't due in for three hours yet, was she?
The glass windows to his workshop came into view, and he saw what Pepper was speaking to, tearfully and sniffling, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.
"...and sometimes I just think I'm not getting any younger, you know?"
"Uh-huh," said the giant alien robot seated next to her, resting his chin in his hand.
"It's just, he's so irresponsible. If it wasn't for the AI, he couldn't even keep his houseplants alive."
"Geez, that's terrible," Wheeljack said, a perfunctory response he'd probably been offering up for hours.
"And it's only gotten worse since all the Avenger stuff began. One time he came home with half his organs decaying from radiation sickness because he hadn't remembered some sort of shield for the suit when he went on a spacewalk..."
"You're kiddin'."
Stark could recognise that pose anywhere. It was the I'm Very Alert And I Care Very Deeply About Everything You Say position. Which was Position #3, right before Position #4: horizontal.
Stark would swear Pepper was smart enough not to fall for this kind of thing, but, oh, it seemed she was. "Oh god, you don't even know," she exclaimed. She blew her nose and snuffled. "And I had to make all the calls to rush him to an unlisted research hospital in New Mexico for the treatment, and you know those friends of his are never any help at all when they aren't beating something up..."
Stark keyed open the workshop door.
Pepper glanced up at the sound and bolted upright, hiccuping once and quickly rubbing her wet, dark-ringed eyes. She tried and largely failed to smooth the front of yesterday's suit and then, fumbling to excuse herself, left the room with all possible speed. She brushed past Stark without a word, he guessed to go make coffee or write her letter of resignation or both.
He'd field that later. For the moment he had something else to attend to. Wheeljack, for his part, had the decency to straighten up in his sitting position but not to stand, which was probably for the best, given the dent in the ceiling.
Stark felt the urge rise up in him but hovered over what, exactly, to say. He decided the recent incident was a bit fresh to dig into just yet. And he really didn't want to look like an idiot and ask just how the mech had gotten into his home unnoticed, since making an ass out him was probably the whole point.
Anyway, there was something that was making him even more territorial.
"You and Ratchet... have some sort of 'understanding', I take it."
"Well-spotted," said Wheeljack. His tone wasn't very humble for someone breaking into another inventor's private workspace, but the robot did seem to have been up all night hearing bad things about him from Pepper.
...Pepper...
"Yeah, well," Stark said, straightening up. "Miss Potts and I... do not. So you can just go right ahead."
"She doesn't need your permission."
"And Ratchet doesn't need you as a chaperone either."
"That's for him to say."
Damn it. Them and their pronouns. "And your programming is buggy as hell," Stark added.
Wheeljack's lights flashed as he scoffed. "You don't know the half of what I wrote into that thing."
"I'll find out soon."
"You're not that lucky."
"You can't stop her from coming," said Stark.
"You can't stop Pepper either," returned Wheeljack.
"Great. She'll bring back notes."
"So will Ratchet."
"Fine," Stark decided. "Then it's a game."
The mech laughed, once. "I don't enjoy picking on lower life forms."
"But sending your mate to sleep with one, that's just standard operating procedure?" Stark folded his arms, watching Wheeljack's hesitation. "So what sort of deal was Ratchet supposed to make, that you were trying to sell her for?"
Wheeljack leaned closer, growling. He curbed himself, but still said angrily, "We want our comrade back. If you're lying about about your ability to do that much..."
"It's done," Stark said at once, without a twitch in his expression. "I'll send you the details for retrieval in two days. Now get out of my garage."
===
Pepper couldn't believe herself. She had stayed up all night pouring her heart out, not to her mother or her therapist, but to a giant robot from beyond the stars who didn't even have a mouth. If she ever needed a roadsign to indicate just how far removed she was from her former, normal life, it was probably that.She was so very tired. Her face was hot and fuzzy and she probably smelled and looked terrible. She would have to drive back to her condo to wash and change, but if Stark was up anyway she had better put some coffee on, the less for him to complain about while she was out. And she better check with J.A.R.V.I.S. to see how close the 'guest' upstairs was to waking up and needing removal.
Unfortunately, Pepper wasn't even afforded that amount of mental space. When she entered the main floor kitchen, she found a slender woman in her 30s fiddling abstractedly with the stove. She had red hair, darker and shorter than Pepper's own, and the only thing she had on was a bedsheet.
The woman looked up in surprise as Pepper entered, stopping the latter in her tracks. Even given the guest's bedhead and the sheet gathered around her chest, she probably looked a lot more put together than Pepper did right then. How was she supposed to tactfully shoo someone out in this state?
"Good morning," Pepper attempted. "Miss...?"
The woman seemed to study her intently. Her eyes were unnaturally bright. "Oh, so you're Pepper."
"Pepper Potts. Yes," Pepper said stonily. "I'm sorry, miss, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to--"
"Ah-ha, okay," came Stark's voice from behind her. Pepper jolted upon feeling his hand come to rest on her shoulder. He travelled around her and went to the side of his guest, who was still watching Pepper like a hawk. Stark, dressed only in his old sweatpants Pepper swore she had told the cleaning lady to throw out, was an appropriately white-trash match with Miss Bedsheet. "It's fine, you don't need to escort her out. She's... going to be staying around for a while," Stark informed Pepper. He laid a hand on the woman's back. Her bare back.
"Of course," Pepper said mechanically. "I apologise for getting ahead of myself, Mister Stark."
Stark looked between the two women, seeming to notice, awkwardly, that they were still regarding one another warily. The longer Pepper looked at the woman, the more apparent it became that there was a connection between Wheeljack's presence downstairs and this lady here. If she was even rightly called a lady.
"Right. Introductions," Stark was babbling. "Honey, this is Miss Potts, my assistant. Miss Potts, this is... Uh..."
"Ratchet," said the woman, with surprisingly unrounded consonants. She stuck out her right hand, still using the left to hold the sheet to her body. "I'm an ambulance."
Pepper accepted it readily, glad to be right and to see Stark wincing, as though it could really escape her these days when something was not human. "I see," Pepper said. "Well, I congratulate you on being so compact."
The robot --or whatever you might call the facsimile she was adopting-- gripped Pepper's hand firmly, and flattened her lips to a tight line.
This was as much a victory as Pepper needed to feel better right then. She ended the handshake. "I should get going," she said brightly, still not breaking her gaze with Ratchet. "Mister Stark, I'll be back at nine to discuss the proofs I left down in your workshop."
"Actually, Miss Potts, if I could have a word for a second?"
Pepper blinked, finally looking over to meet Stark's gaze directly. He looked serious.
"Of course," she said again, meaning it a little less superficially this time. "But I'm sure Miss Ratchet wouldn't appreciate--"
The robot suddenly clutched Stark's arm, causing both humans to jump. Stark looked over to her, inquiring, but falling short when Ratchet's body froze, flickered, and vanished.
"Shit," Stark said, looking at the bedsheet Ratchet had left behind, crumpled in a heap on the kitchen floor. "I guess they had her terminate the signal..."
Pepper was halfway between having a heart attack and feeling glad that here, at least, was one girl who could see herself out. She opted to hang onto the latter thought for support, lest the idea of Stark having sex with a hologram do terrible things to her unrested brain. She credited her time in Iron Man's employ as the main reason she was able to recover quickly and say, "So what was that you were saying, Tony?"
Stark took a moment longer to refocus. "So your little heart-to-heart with the giant robot downstairs," he began.
"His name is Wheeljack."
"I know his name, Pepper. It's the continued absurdity of giant robots from outer space that makes it too funny not to say."
"Fair enough."
Stark looked exasperated. "He's not even street-legal, you know."
"I didn't get a good look," Pepper said innocently.
"Did you happen to get a better look at his reading material?" Stark demanded. "A giant alien robot sneaks into this compound that J.A.R.V.I.S. can't even spot and jacks into a computer containing my project files --the top secret project files, not that I have another kind-- and it doesn't occur to you that something is wrong?"
"The Autobots are allied with the Avengers, Tony. Even I got that memo."
"Good lord. And you can't think of any other organisations who were 'allies' because it was too dangerous to try to take one or the other out?"
Pepper threw up her hands. "He made no effort to touch anything while I was there. He didn't try to get rid of me. I thought he was there to talk to you. You know your colleagues have the poorest social graces in the world."
"And you didn't come get me because...?"
"Because you were 'doing something unloggable'!" she exclaimed. "I'm not indiscreet like that, Tony, I'm just not."
Stark appeared as though he wouldn't have appreciated the interruption either. Even so, the situation seemed to be grave. "Pepper," he said. "He copied the project files on the mecha."
Pepper was confused. "But you based that on their species in the first place, didn't you?"
"Well, yeah," said her boss carefully. "But they're not going to appreciate some of the cross-references."
She realised, all at once, what he was talking about. Talk about something doing all the work of a cold shower. "Oh," she said.
"I know," Stark said grimly.
"Oh, no."
"Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at."
"Let's not preempt ourselves," Pepper urged, in an effort to, at least, allay some of the present anxiety. "'Jack might not have copied enough to have a case to make... or he might not feel like making it."
"Yes," Stark said sarcastically. "We can always be naively optimistic and hope his better nature is going to prevail. I can just see them being rational about this."
Pepper regarded him sourly. "You know, it just occurred to me," she began.
"What?"
"The way you abuse machines. I always sort of wondered what might happen if they could bite back."
"You're saying I brought this on myself," Stark translated coldly.
"No," said Pepper; "you brought this on me, and on Steve, and on everyone else. How are you going to handle this, Tony?"
"With any luck, expediently."
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