===
While Ratchet busied himself making the best possible use out of his male avatar's blunted circumstances, it may have interested the medic to know that Wheeljack was constructing an advanced male model. And the data was still pouring in.This police officer avatar that Wheeljack had decided to build as a surprise for Prowl was a good test drive of the possibilities, particularly with energy signature cloaking. He bet Ratchet's exterior raster feeds were so blown out by the floodlights that they hadn't even noticed the car was just his Lancia with a borrowed set of lightbars. But this thing was just a side project. The real point of interest was the reason he was out here putting on a light show in the first place.
Originally, Wheeljack had intended to install deep-field three-dimensional scanners on Ratchet's female model, but found they caused too much slowdown to run silent as intended. That left installing it on the male model, which would still run so comparatively light next to the female avatar that Wheeljack doubted Ratchet would even notice a difference. The only remaining obstacle was putting Ratchet in a situation where he would feel compelled to switch over.
The scanners were sophisticated enough that even a small exposure was more than sufficient to do a complete topical scan of everything within a 10 metre radius, including Stark's body, enough to plausibly fool a casual observer. But to Wheeljack's surprise, the scan reports kept going even after Ratchet was back on the road. The data his avatar was catching was... illuminating, to say the least.
Back on the road toward Stark Compound, Wheeljack started pulling the data together and uplinked with his Ark-32 server to start constructing a working model, using the policeman beta as a template. He vacillated over some of the details: Ratchet's female model had been designed for realistic response, but how many Turing tests would Wheeljack's Stark have to go through tonight? He decided on a 1/8 complexity neural map and some basic internal organ and chemical simulacra, minding to scale back the testosterone output given that Stark was exhibiting heightened amounts of it at the moment. When Wheeljack was satisfied with the body, he started on reconstructing the clothes, which took a little longer. At that point in assembly, Ratchet's avatar had already stripped the human of everything he had on.
Wheeljack finished two microcycles before the turn-off. He engaged the new avatar in his driver's seat and installed the false-positive cloak over his vehicle mode. If J.A.R.V.I.S. was going to x-ray him, he'd get a set of schematics back wholly different than what was really under Wheeljack's hood.
Wheeljack rolled up to the compound's front gates and parted his driver side window for the benefit of the security camera.
"We're certainly back early tonight, Mister Stark," J.A.R.V.I.S. observed dryly. "Isn't it a Friday?"
"Nothing biting that was worth catching," Wheeljack answered. He was confident in the voice modulator --Stark had provided Ratchet's sensors with a considerable vocal range-- but he doubted he could master the cadence. Best to keep the chatter to a minimum.
"A new purchase, sir?" Wheeljack detected the security gate's scanners running over his vehicle form. "Or merely borrowing?"
It seemed Wheeljack's intel about equipment clearances was dead on. "Paperwork should be cleared by tomorrow, J.A.R.V.I.S., it's okay to let it in for tonight."
There was a moment's indecision from the security system. Then the electrified deadbolts capable of withstanding point-blank shelling disengaged and slid back from the gate, which pulled open. "Your taste is as questionable as always, sir," the AI quipped. "I'll queue up some buyers for when you inevitably change your mind in the morning, shall I?"
"Whatever clocks your processors," Wheeljack replied, leaning the avatar back into position. He released his brakes and started up the drive toward the garage entrance.
"Oh, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke up as Wheeljack began rolling away. "About Misters Cage and Logan--"
Nothing shot down an idea like treating it as old news, the Autobot decided. "Already aware of it, J.A.R.V.I.S."
"Very good, Mister Stark." The AI sounded resentful, but promptly fell silent.
As Wheeljack continued up the drive, he reminded himself not to get too smug. Just because the avatar had passed an optical read didn't mean the next step was going to be so easy. Stark was surely going to exploit the nuances of human authenticity as far as it could go, knowing he was protecting his trade secrets from someone of an entirely other species. And those nuances were not going to come in the form of idioms or strange human injokes: it was going to come down to the blood. Well, Stark was going to see just how smart Wheeljack's scan tech could actually get.
Entering the garage, the first thing Wheeljack did was switch the avatar's resonance output to a more modest frequency, lest the neutrinos start rattling environmental sensors that, though too blunted to read them, might still be shaken into noticing something wrong. This done, Wheeljack parked himself as neatly next to the rest of Stark's chattel and switched to embedded view. And that was when the sensory overload hit.
Wheeljack only barely kept from flinching. In total feedback mode, the avatar really was spewing forth massive amounts of data, even when it was completely at a state of rest. The simplified sensor maps did not at all sufficiently mitigate the resource leech resulting from the holomatter's simulated organ and bone networks. He had better not get this thing too excited, or he was going to run afoul with the emergency view-lock just like Ratchet had. Or worse, the layers were going to start clipping.
Redoubling his concentration, Wheeljack got the avatar out of his driver side and managed to swagger the Stark model over toward his work station. He made a show of nonchalantly examining a few other things strewn around the desk.
"Will you be confining yourself to your workshop again this evening, Mister Stark?" J.A.R.V.I.S. seemed to be emitting from one of the computer arrays. He sounded resigned.
"Got some catch-up to do," Wheeljack's avatar mumbled, leaving aside a scrapped reactor coil. "Open all files on Project Gillian."
"You have flagged Project Gillian with Level S access restriction."
"I was prepared for that when I set it up, J.A.R.V.I.S.. Hit me."
"Very well," said the AI. "Question one of sixty-nine..."
Oh, cute.
"Middle name."
Wheeljack referred to his human profiles directory. "Edward," he said.
"It seems Pepper underestimated you," J.A.R.V.I.S. remarked, as though this should be taken as praise. "Question two of sixty-nine. A train leaves Des Moines at 65 miles per hour..."
Okay, now Wheeljack knew the human was fragging with him. He got about thirty questions in, dealing with algebra, differential equations and very flawed ideas of quantum mechanics, until the Autobot finally erupted, only barely in character: "Did I actually programme this?!"
"I suppose you could override it, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. said obligingly. "But then I would be compelled to wipe the local servers."
"That's a little over the top. Why do you let me do these things?"
"In my personal opinion, sir, you are prone to particular fits of melodrama. I felt this was only par the course. Naturally, I can appreciate wanting to prevent unintended access at all costs. Are you officially forfeiting the home servers, sir?"
"No!" Wheeljack said quickly, before realising he sounded just a little too desperate there. He recovered, easing the avatar's expression. "But can we hurry it up, please?"
"I suppose the average intruder would indeed have a great deal more patience than you are in possession of, Mister Stark," J.A.R.V.I.S. acknowledged. "We'll move ahead to the bioscans, shall we?"
A refitted drawer beneath the main monitor array popped open, ushering out a handful of little contraptions that all looked like they hurt. Given the schematics for suit assembly Stark kept in this lab, though, Wheeljack supposed this was less invasive than it could have been.
Well, here was the real test. Time to see how this Stark-doll measured up.
"Open your shirt, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. prompted.
But just as Wheeljack as attempting to obey, a voice came from the doorway: "Abort, J.A.R.V.I.S.."
Wheeljack's avatar almost lurched out of its skin, which was a very real danger with the present clipping issues.
He made a point of not looking around. Or buttoning his shirt back up. "You have a bad habit of making people jump, you know that?" he told Pepper, as her high heels clicked across the floor. He looked over in time for the human to shove a datapad under the avatar's nose.
It seemed to depict a website. The photo's resolution was only so-so, but there was little doubt that one of the figures was Wheeljack's handiwork. The other two, the males, were not unfamiliar either, even if they seemed at the moment to be in mutual headlocks.
"Do you think it's possible for that Stepford Wife of yours to not clone herself after some B-list TV star?" Pepper demanded.
Damn. He knew it had been a mistake to scan Ratchet's avatar after a human actress. But there were so many of them and they all looked so similar, he would have thought no-one would be able to place her. The important point had simply been to get Stark's attention, but clearly it was generating more attention than intended. Talk about a jealous costar.
"Oh. Huh," Wheeljack said numbly, staring at it. Come to that, the Stark-doll did seem to exhibit facial damage, or rather, more damage than Wheeljack had seen to inflicting himself back in Florida. He twitched for effect.
Pepper withdrew the datapad. She looked tired and flustered, not even properly dressed, like she had just thrown something on and driven over here. Did she do that often? "If she's such an advanced alien, can't she just fabricate a new hologram for you to play with?" she demanded.
"Holomatter," Wheeljack couldn't help correcting. "It's a hard light projection, works with neutrinos."
"Tony, it could run on D batteries for all that it matters! Did you ever think what's going to happen in a few hours when this woman's publicist wakes up? If these robots are so advanced, how come she couldn't just put a different nose on it, or something like that?"
Wheeljack was genuinely starting to feel helpless under that aggressive gaze. "Pepper, it's not that simple. It's a structural composite with proprietary scanni--"
Understanding came over Pepper's expression in an instant. "Hi, 'Jack," she said coolly.
Slag. "Hello, Pepper," Wheeljack said meekly.
Pepper nodded, staring venomously. A cold, uncomfortable sensation spread through the avatar's stomach area: some sort of panic instinct. "You've got a lot of nerve," she said sternly. She crossed her arms over her breasts. "There's not even a good word for what you're doing. This is sick. It's depraved."
There was something nostalgic in how she looked when she was mad. Moral tirades didn't much tend to bother Wheeljack, unless they came from particular individuals. The way she managed to appear personally wounded cut Wheeljack a lot deeper than he liked.
"Wasn't expectin' to run into you again," Wheeljack admitted, letting himself slip back into his own speech patterns. He kept Stark's voice modulation, on the hunch that it would trip J.A.R.V.I.S. if he didn't. "'Guess we should both be honest this time."
"'Honest'?" Pepper repeated. She moved closer. The avatar instinctively moved back. This largely had the result of backing the Stark-doll up against the work station. "I shared everything with you. I thought you were being a friend."
"We are friends."
"Tony was right this whole time. You're here for his project files." She had officially entered his personal space now. Incredible-- it was like the air started buzzing. He was getting subtle heat readings off her, as well as a few other things. "I can't believe I ever gave you the benefit of the doubt," she said, her voice starting to break.
Slag it, he just couldn't take her looking at him like that, not this close. Humans were far too expressive at this proximity. Worse still, the avatar's olfactory readers were telling him things that were getting harder and harder to ignore. "And yet," he said quietly, "you haven't told J.A.R.V.I.S. to throw me out yet."
Wheeljack saw her hesitate. Only briefly, but it was there.
"You got in through gate security with this thing," she said uncertainly, surveying the avatar's surface for a moment. Human optics were so neat-looking when they moved. "You've sufficiently convinced J.A.R.V.I.S., enough that he's taken to insulting you... And I bet you thought you could access the home server, even though the security check is probably more rigorous than a doctor's exam."
"For running on batteries," Wheeljack volunteered, "it gets pretty close to the real thing."
Pepper scoffed. "That would be wrong," she said, appearing, despite the rest of her body language, to be repulsed by the idea. "That would be so... completely wrong."
Wheeljack waited. This needed no additional finesse on his part.
He knew well enough the internal war Pepper had between some of her animal instincts and her pragmatism that reminded her that Stark was as suitable for a long-term exclusive cross-manufacture contract as something cheap fashioned out of plastic. But the Autobot bet she didn't have quite so many hang-ups about a full-scale simulation. Actually, that seemed to fall under the heading of fantasy fulfilment, if he understood the interplay between human imagination and breeding impulse correctly.
"Also," Pepper went on stubbornly, "you're going to do something to that computer the second I turn around."
"Don't need to," Wheeljack said, letting his grin widen. "Seems I've got someone else to beta."
Pepper's eyes flashed. But she was a clever little human, like her boss. "You think you're going to get that data out of me instead," she interpreted.
"All I want to know," Wheeljack rumbled, leaning close so that the avatar's simulated breath would tickle her ears, like Stark liked to do to Ratchet, "is what it's going to take to get some justice 'round this place."
He detected her breath drawing up short. "I'll save you the trouble of looking," she murmured. "We haven't done anything wrong."
"Your species has got some pretty half-on, half-off notions of what's wrong," he said quietly. "And I'm not saying my ethics are a thing ta behold. But I wouldn't go cuttin' open a human to see how he worked."
Pepper said nothing. She swallowed, and the lines in her throat tightened. Because it seemed like either the right or the exact wrong thing to do just then, Wheeljack had the avatar lean down just that extra bit more and lay a light, dry kiss against the side of her neck. She gasped out a startled breath; her hand flew up and pressed itself against the surface of the Stark-doll's arc reactor.
"He didn't--"
"I saw the reference files."
"He pulled out of the project before the Headmaster initiative. He didn't have anything to do with--"
"But if he found out then or later, he still didn't step in. He brought it up with Ratchet like a prize, something to be offered in exchange for a bit of effort." He slid his arms around her sides and kissed closer to the crook of her neck. She jerked and almost seemed to fight against him, but not exactly. In a moment she was doing just the opposite. But Wheeljack wasn't feeling like going easy on her yet. "And then when your boss figured I'd caught on, he tried to kill us. Did he tell you that bit?"
"I don't--"
"'Course not. You're hardwired for loyalty, aren't ya? Just like this devnull AI."
Pepper snapped her head upright. She locked Wheeljack's avatar into a fierce gaze.
"If J.A.R.V.I.S. hasn't figured it out already, now he knows you're not real," she said spitefully.
Wheeljack could almost laugh. It sounded like a dare. "I'll submit to any test you two want. I'm the genuine article as far as human medical science can tell."
"I'd know you weren't Tony even if you played him perfectly," Pepper argued, withdrawing her hands from wherever they had been wandering. She wrestled out of the Stark-doll's embrace. Wheeljack let her; why not? "As it is, you couldn't even pass for a decoy. And anyway," she added in a raised voice, "unlike him, I don't have some fetish for machinery."
"Neutrinos."
"You're not real," she said flatly.
"That's the problem with you creatures," Wheeljack told her. "You just think that it doesn't count if it ain't organic."
"And what about you?" Pepper challenged. She gestured to the avatar's body. "What did you do to make your copy? How is that any different?"
"We didn't hurt anyone."
"This isn't hurting us?" Pepper demanded. "Humans don't just--! It's not just fun, 'Jack! It has meaning! You're using him just the same as you're letting him use one of yours! Is that how you want to get your friend back?"
For a moment, Wheeljack thought that by 'friend' Pepper was referring to Ratchet, and he hesitated wondering just how an activity like this could somehow repair things between them. But it occurred to him that she must mean Sunstreaker. And that thought didn't make him feel any better.
"--Uh--" he croaked. "I, uh..."
Pepper shook her head, taking a step back. "J.A.R.V.I.S.?"
Damn it. So she was forcing his hand, huh?
"Yes, Miss Potts?" came the AI, apparently of the speak-when-spoken-to variety.
"I'd like you to--"
"Hey, J.A.R.V.I.S.," Wheeljack spoke up, adopting Stark's cadence again. "I think I want to override the Level S security restriction after all."
"They're your files, Mister Stark," the AI said with resignation. "Awaiting voice override."
Pepper looked panicked. "J.A.R.V.I.S.! Didn't you hear what we've been saying?!"
"Mister Stark has customarily requested a localised dead zone during unloggable contact, Miss Potts; I am sorry to have preempted you," J.A.R.V.I.S. said respectfully. "As you know, anti-blackmail measures are especially pertinent when it involves both Mister Stark and yourse--"
"This isn't Mister Stark! This is an imposter! He's an Autobot and he's right over there!" She stabbed a finger at Wheeljack's vehicle form, still dormant next to Stark's other cars.
J.A.R.V.I.S. took a moment to evaluate this, and possibly to redouble his scans over Wheeljack. "The car, I grant you, seems unsavoury enough for it. However, I am unable to confirm. As for Mister Stark..."
"What, you want a DNA test?" Wheeljack asked through his avatar. He didn't break Pepper's gaze. "'Cause I can give you one."
Pepper's eyes narrowed.
"Only if you have again reconsidered and wish to access your project files, sir."
"Sure," said Wheeljack. "Let's."
Since Pepper had successfully backed him up against the work table, there was no distance to cross to tug open that bioscan drawer again and flip open what a schematic scan told him was a blood sampler.
He gave the human female one last brisk smile. If she wasn't happy to do a Turing test with him, then it was back to the machines. No huge loss.
Wheeljack ensured that the fluid simulators were all online and functioning properly, then he slid the avatar's forefinger into the device. He didn't quite manage to get the top latch to engage before Pepper grabbed his arm by the wrist. And he didn't quite manage to react to that before she pressed herself onto him, and then there was a whole sequence of events outside of his control.
===
Stark breathed in hard, audible pants. He was stripped bare, covered in sweat, propped up by one elbow while his other hand worked tighter and faster around his cock. He could feel his orgasm coming on strong, now-- urgent and feverish like practically nothing he had experienced since he was a teenager. Ratchet's fingers were stroking just the right spot inside him, causing his legs to fold up and his back to arch and lift his body off the stretcher in a way that was probably going to hurt in the morning.They had come to park... somewhere. It seemed away from the beach, in a place that was apparently secluded, where Ratchet could have the room to concentrate. The whole situation reminded Stark of nothing so much as the night --it should have felt like yesterday, but it seemed like a hundred years ago-- when he'd first driven a girl up to the local lover's lane and given away his virginity at somewhat under fair market value. Currently, however, he seemed to be on the other side of the equation. And he definitely wasn't feeling as nonplussed as his date had that night.
When Stark came, the orgasm hit him hard, rocking his body until every muscle vibrated. His entire lower body tensed, convulsing; hot, sticky ejaculate spilled over his fingers and his stomach. The holomatter's fingers, still inside him, switched their technique and stayed still, pressing rhythmically against his prostate to draw out just that little bit more stimulation.
Stark shivered and collapsed again, letting his head land on the rough sheet of the stretcher. He let the few last shudders wash over him and allowed his breathing to gradually slow.
He suddenly felt ridiculously tired. That hadn't been at all your regular, run-of-the-mill sex; Stark couldn't remember putting so much energy into a fuck, even the really good ones. And now, provided Ratchet would get those fingers out of him, he felt like he could sleep for a week.
He did, distantly, feel Ratchet slip his fingers out of him, but not soon after felt the holomatter hovering over him, like Ratchet was waiting for something.
"Tony?"
"Nnh-ahh," Stark mumbled, a nice warm feeling slowly overtaking him now.
"Are you all right?" The robot sounded concerned.
"Sure."
"Aren't you going to...?"
"Hmm? Mm..." He rolled over onto his side, pulling the stretcher sheet over him.
There was an annoyed silence, but he was used to those. He'd be out like a light in ten seconds, and then Pepper could show the giant robot to the curb in the morning...
A sharp jolt of static bit at his shoulder. He jerked, confused, but guessed his arc reactor must be leaking again. In the morning, damn it--
"Tony!"
There was another zap, followed by another, little burning sensations stabbing up and down his side and then, suddenly, a big one that actually seized up his muscles. His eyes snapped open, the wind knocked out of him. He started coughing.
"I'm awake, I'm awake!" he complained, twisting. He scowled up at Ratchet's avatar. She'd switched back to her girl shape and she looked like Stark should be doing something about it. "Thanks," he told her sarcastically: "I love a girl who fingers my ass and then tasers me."
"That couldn't have hurt," Ratchet said, unimpressed.
"A few more of those and we'll see what your heart monitor says about that," Stark retorted. "You're made out of electricity and I've got a heart condition. Could you take it easy?"
"Shrapnel isn't a heart condition."
Stark rolled his eyes and flopped back down on the stretcher. It didn't feel nearly as comfortable as before. "You do great pillow talk, you know that?"
"You're not done," Ratchet told him insistently. "What happened to the stamina from last time?"
"But you were a new gizmo then..."
She looked like she might slap him. Or, what was more likely given her personality, electrocute him again. She settled on a frown, and climbed up onto the narrow stretcher to straddle his bare thighs.
He noticed for the first time that she had changed presets upon switching back to this avatar. For whatever else he could say about Wheeljack, he had to compliment the mech for his bold choices. She looked surprisingly good in leather.
She felt really good in leather, too, but Stark lurched painfully nonetheless when she stroked his penis with one of her gloved hands. The skin felt raw, far too sensitive to be touched right then. He was cringing in seconds.
"Hey, c'mon, stop--"
"I managed," Ratchet pointed out, irritated.
"What, all that research and you didn't wiki 'refractory period'? Ah, god, stop, stop." He desperately grabbed her wrist to force her hand still. "I'm awake, just, let's try something else."
"Those eighty-seven things you mentioned?" she said sarcastically.
"Most of those are going to have to wait half an hour," Stark answered, still feeling a little dizzy. He was beginning to see the benefits to crashing Ratchet's code a few times before taking care of himself-- a deliriously overstimulated hologram asked far fewer questions. What could he do with her now that she wasn't going to get bored by?
...Something was bugging him.
"So do you... actual you," he said, tapping against a panel of metal next to him that he guessed was part of the robot's leg, "feel anything when we...?"
Ratchet's avatar seemed to hesitate at that. "You know, I'm not actually sure," she admitted.
"Huh?"
"Well, the last time I was projecting remotely, so I didn't have access to my own biosigns." She finally released her grip on his penis and began pulling her gloves off. "I didn't notice anything in the logs afterwards, so I guess not," she finished, shrugging.
Stark watched her, baffled. "That... doesn't bother you?"
"I guess it means it wasn't 'real', but, honestly, it isn't all that different from how coupling works in Transformers anyway--"
She froze, realising what she was saying at the same time Stark did.
Oh irony. Hadn't all this started snowballing because he'd been a bit too prurient and the Autobots had been a bit too prudish? They'd been oh-so-jolly about showing him anatomy books and combustive dampeners and fractal paintings, but the minute things had turned to how a bunch of robots got down and dirty --as he knew they did, because any species that anthropomorphic just had to have sex, just as they had to have politics and junk food-- somehow everything had become 'classified'. This whole little game of Battleship he seemed to be playing with Wheeljack was because things were so supposedly 'classified'. And in the end, the mystery wasn't even worth the hype.
"It's electrical," Stark interpreted. God, it made so much sense. He didn't know what he had been imagining. Strangely flexible pipes and ducts, maybe. But how did you expect a bunch of walking, talking computers to get themselves off? "That's kind of awesome. Is it distributed or centralised?"
Ratchet appeared mortified. Stark didn't know if Cybertronians had anything like a Pandora's Box myth, but the holomatter looked like she had just opened one. "It, um," she stuttered. "I'm not supposed to..."
"Could I do it to you?" Stark asked eagerly.
"No," Ratchet said immediately.
Stark gave her thighs a playful squeeze. "I bet I could."
She shifted her weight on top of him. "No," she answered stubbornly, "you couldn't."
"Bet so," he said.
"I'd bet again," she advised.
"Give me an interface and I can crack anything. I bet all I'd need is something with Linux."
He caught a minute shudder coursing through her body. And she was blushing! Stark couldn't contain his grin. It was turning her on just talking about it, and she clearly hated herself for it.
This was so cool. It was his hacking days at MIT all over again, only this time it wasn't just a blow-up doll running E.L.I.Z.A.. Even Rhodey would get a kick out of this. If only he had a laptop with him. Maybe he could just rewire his cell phone...?
"Oh! Oh!" Stark announced, as another idea occurred to him. He excitedly climbed up into a sitting position, which had the effect of awkwardly reseating Ratchet into his lap with her legs around his waist. He wrapped his arms around her when she started to go unbalanced. "I've got it. You can copy the holomatter's neural maps back over your topical sensor associations--"
"It wouldn't work like that," she began to protest.
"No, listen! It'd create an amplified associative relay and translate the signals back into native analogues. We could create a likening web to compensate for structural discrepancies..." He felt like he needed to draw this out, but he could see it in his head, and it was great.
Stark also felt himself getting aroused again, despite all expectations. It could just have been the holomatter's warmer parts rubbing up against his crotch, but he doubted it ended there. Sometimes he suspected he really did have a bit too much of a hard-on for machines. Well, that was becoming a little literal just now.
It didn't escape Ratchet's notice. "You really want to try this," she said, flustered and vaguely alarmed. She wrapped her arms tighter around his shoulders when he repositioned her hips to frot against her in earnest. She gasped, apparently liking the way his erection ground against her. He bet those pants were going to turn into a liability very quickly. "But-- Tony-- we don't have the right--"
"If I have to jack into you with my chest piece, I'm going to," he growled playfully, finding the back zipper to her top. "I told you I was compatible."
Abruptly, Ratchet reached an arm around behind her and grabbed his forearm, leaving about an inch still zipped. She waited until he felt compelled to meet her gaze.
"Fine," she said, dropping her lilt and reverting to her normal speech patterns again. "You're welcome to try. But I want something in trade."
Stark laughed weakly, confused. He peered incredulously at her, but her resolute expression didn't budge. It also didn't offer any hints. "What," he said, taking a shot in the dark, "you want me to make you a jetpack or something?"
Pepper was right: the holomatter's eyes were unnaturally bright. At least at this proximity. "I want details on the Florida operation."
Crap.
"Can it wait?" Stark asked desperately. Now that she was a shiny new toy full of possibilities again, the last thing he wanted was to get derailed into talking about work. She was probably not going to appreciate the mine-exploding-in-her-boyfriend's-face part, either.
Ratchet, however, didn't miss a beat. She brushed Stark's hand away from her back and undid the last of the zipper herself, shrugging the top off and letting it vanish like the gloves. To his pleasant surprise, her designer had remembered a bra on this one, although it wasn't the most practical. Expensive things never were.
"I can multitask, you know," she said, wasting no time in undoing this garment as well. "It's just a little hard to drive like this. There are a lot of layers."
Fewer by the second, Stark observed. But that was anything but helping him at the moment.
"Suppose for a second that I'm not so good at multitasking," he tried, in some vain attempt to regain ground.
"Of course you are," Ratchet said matter-of-factly. Finding she couldn't easily remove her pants without having to reposition herself, she opted instead to just delete the relevant layers. And so she was, quite suddenly, naked and pressed skin-to-synthesised-skin with him, particularly the more sensitive bits.
Stark knew it probably wasn't in his best interests to play into this, but she was rubbing a bit too nicely against his happy parts. "Anyone can daytrade while fighting Doctor Doom. He's not exactly fresh," he argued.
"Do you want to know how we mate or don't you?"
That sent a shiver down his spine. "It's procreative?" he asked excitedly.
"No." She smirked. "Just wanted to see how you'd react."
"Oh." He tried to hide his disappointment. "So how do you--"
"I believe the phrase is 'quid pro quo'?" Ratchet's avatar reached up and undid the clip tying up her hair. It fell in locks around her face.
She drew her legs down so she could lift herself up on her knees, more than a little obviously presenting her breasts to him. Well, Stark was never one to refuse a gift. He captured one of her pert nipples between his lips and sucked like he meant it. Ratchet let out a pleased sigh, far apart from the exaggerated behaviour from the other day. She said, "Wheeljack told me he only wished there was something of yours worth buying. Maybe for him there isn't, but I'm seeing things differently... I want to know what's so important I got shut out of the Florida mission."
Stark released the nipple and nipped at the surrounding skin. "Nothing," he said, a little muffled by her breast. "You didn't miss anything."
"Dross. You're holding out on me."
"You know, your kind have the cutest swear words..."
"Keep stalling and I'll disengage elasticity."
"What about the associative neural relays?" Stark pleaded, aware that it came out like a whine.
"There aren't going to be any if I don't get some answers," Ratchet threatened.
This was clearly going to take a more advanced strategy. Still with his face buried in the holomatter's breasts, Stark led a hand up her inner thigh and brushed at the lips of her vulva, running a thumb over her clitoris. The sounds she made indicated this met with approval, but Ratchet didn't melt as instantly as Stark might have hoped. Instead, she rolled her pelvis to better meet his hand, rubbing against his palm almost like she was humouring him-- and then shocked him with something in the vicinity of 50 volts.
Stark yelped and tore his hand away. "Jesus!"
"I told you to keep your hands to yourself," Ratchet reminded.
"Better than your average vagina dentata, but god--!"
Ratchet peered down at him, looking poised to actually emasculate him if he didn't start telling her what she wanted to know. Unfortunately, if she knew the truth, she would probably castrate him anyway. Or at least not let him poke around under her hood, and Stark wasn't sure which was worse.
Finally, the little part of him that had first come to life in Afghanistan reared its head. It was time to be a man about this. Or rather, to be Iron Man, and suck up this hormonal teenage bullshit.
"Look. Ratchet," he said, meeting her gaze. "The truth is, I..."
She was watching him attentively. Like Pepper. Poised to hear something understandable, something that wouldn't challenge her respect for him.
"...Truth is..."
Mightier superheroes than he would have crumbled under that look, even if Ratchet hadn't also been naked and almost exactly in one of his favourite sexual positions. He felt his resolve leave him, as though evaporating out of his body.
Stark hung his head. "I failed," he said. "I screwed up the deal, and the Machination called it off."
Ratchet's hands, resting on his shoulders, seemed to hesitate. "Really?" she asked softly.
"Your friends probably didn't want to get into it, seeing as they didn't come out smelling like roses either. Can't say I blame them. It's a huge mess." He let his voice drop quieter. "I'm not sure how to fix it."
Here came the pity. Under normal circumstances, Stark found this kind of emotional manipulation beneath him, but at the end of the day, this did boil down to fraternising with the enemy. Let people like Cap and Pepper be the moral ones. He was only looking out in humanity's best interests.
Right. Sure he was.
Instead of getting a hug or a 'can I help', however, Stark became aware of one of Ratchet's fingers tapping against his shoulder.
"...Liar," she said.
He snapped his head up, despite his better judgement, and found Ratchet's expression anything but warm and embracing. Actually, it was the most ill-humoured Stark had ever seen it.
Great.
This was all going to end in bullets, wasn't it.
===
Pepper stared absently at the ceiling while Wheeljack's breathing gradually slowed, his face buried in her breasts. She played with a damp curl of hair and reflected, in a distant sort of way, that she hadn't even really had a chance to get her heart rate up. Talk about the least exciting seven minutes of her life since high school.She told herself she shouldn't feel disappointed. This didn't actually reflect on Tony at all; she couldn't properly evaluate Wheeljack's claims to verisimilitude, so she had no right to pass judgement.
But none of that changed the fact that she was here, in Stark's bed, in a position and a state of undress she'd never have imagined herself. Well, not to any degree of seriousness, anyway. And she was here because she had done a terrible thing to salvage an awful situation, and this was something so horribly beneath her and ugly and unprofessional and the least Wheeljack could have done was make it worth it, but he hadn't, and in a few minutes Pepper was going to have some major sort of conniption, followed possibly by a mental break.
She officially hated this job. It wasn't the bad hours. It wasn't the discouraging brush with reality-or-a-close-approximation-thereof. It was just, very simply, not worth it anymore.
Wheeljack's Stark body, still sprawled over her, made some vague effort to pick himself up. "Okay," he grunted. "Wow."
Well, at least one of them felt that way.
"Sorry, not so used to the feedback on this model," he went on. "I'll reset and then we can try again, okay?"
Pepper pulled her gaze away from the ceiling in surprise. Wheeljack, as could be expected, was no master of facial expressions, but he seemed to be earnest.
"...You can do that?" she asked, taken aback.
"Yeah, I guess it's breaking the illusion, but..."
She gripped the hologram firmly by his simulated hair. "I don't care. Do it."
"You sure you don't care about reali--"
"No, I don't." She really, really didn't, just then. The thing could sprout tentacles for all she cared. If the rest of her life wasn't normal, why should her sex life be? "And could you make it thicker?"
She took back her thoughts on 'Jack's facial expressions. He could manage surprise quite well. "Uh," he said. "That'd create all sorts of layering issues..."
"Nevermind. Does your tongue extend?"
He seemed to think about it. "I guess I've got some wiggle room with that," he began.
"Good," Pepper said. "There's something I've always wanted to try."
It wasn't so different than what she was used to, Pepper reasoned. A life as pathetically lonely and stressful as hers had necessitated a few toys at home. This was just a great deal more elaborate and wrong than usual.
But she had to face it: she was going to resign in a few hours. She was never going to have any sort of relationship with the real Tony Stark, and that was probably a good thing. So she might as well make something out of this situation, especially if she was going to be washing these sheets soon anyway.
20 minutes later, in the throes of the most intense G-spot orgasm of her life, Pepper was forced to admit that having sex with an alien machine might actually have more potential than she had given it credit for. And surprisingly, it hadn't involved electrostim or whatever the hell it was that Tony was into.
This time, when Pepper laid back on her boss's sheets, she was drenched and exhausted just as she thought she should be. Wheeljack climbed up from between her legs and gracefully turned away to reset his tongue or whatever it was he had to do. For Pepper's part, she couldn't even feel much below the waist.
"Wow," was all she seemed able to manage.
"That was nifty," Wheeljack's Stark avatar agreed. "Wish I had better environmental scanners on this thing. I coulda used some of that..."
Pepper found she didn't much care to follow most of what he was saying. "I don't suppose you need an assistant?"
"Y'know, for some reason, I can never get them to last."
Stark had said the same thing when he had interviewed her. Pepper couldn't remember how she'd convinced him-- was it dumping twelve tonnes of dubious, possibly radioactive compounds in a discreet location in Nevada without so much as a quirked eyebrow? Somehow, she bet Wheeljack would be a lot harder to impress.
"I have excellent references," she volunteered.
"Ah-heh, sorry, but I need someone without oxygen dependency."
Pepper felt suddenly crushed. She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but there were so many gentler ways to let someone down.
Wheeljack looked around at her, wearing a boyish expression he had no rights to. "C'mon," he said, shaking her loose ankle, "he's not gonna be out all night."
"Why aren't you running for the lab?"
"Nothing left to find out, is there?"
"Apart from where your friend is being kept?"
"Oh," Wheeljack said dismissively. His clothes popped out of nowhere over his body, loading textures layer by layer. For a few seconds, it was like looking at some unfinished Pixar creation. "You can handle the delivery part, can't you?"
She stared at him, and not because of the polygons. "Um, I don't think--"
"Might boost your stats in the application process," he suggested.
"I just don't want anyone to--"
Around that moment, something shook the house. Pepper almost thought it might be due to something gigantic and metal in the garage again, but it sounded a lot closer, and a lot more like steel girders and glass shattering.
Wheeljack's Stark-doll and Pepper traded a look. Wheeljack leaned over and touched the console next to the bed. "J.A.R.V.I.S., dead zone off."
"Appreciated, sir."
"Status report of downstairs?"
"I believe I spoke with you previously about this eventuality, Mister Stark. If you will forgive the reminder."
Pepper had noticed that the AI seemed to be a lot more passive-aggressive than usual these days. She wondered why that was. Either way, J.A.R.V.I.S. wasn't being too helpful at the moment.
With more than a little stiffness in her thighs, Pepper finally managed to roll herself off the bed and locate her clothes. Wheeljack started for the stairs.
"No, let me go first," she said after him.
The Stark-doll looked around, perplexed. "But I'm invincible," he protested. "And a WMD."
"But it's probably one of his friends," Pepper said, sighing. She got her suitpants on finally. "In which case, you better let me do the talking."
Arriving downstairs in some sort of version of the word 'dressed', Pepper was relieved to find that whatever it was that had arrived had only made a modest hole in the lounge wall. Well, that was to say, it was only maybe fifteen feet in diameter. Very conservative for an Avenger.
She picked her way across the debris and found Luke Cage laying a very prone and bloody Wolverine out on Stark's couch.
"Oh, god."
Luke looked around. "Hi, Peps."
"Hi, Luke," she said levelly. "Is he all right?"
"Sure, I guess." Cage appeared a little distracted. He still had cement dust on his face. "Tony in the house?"
"Sorry, no. Is Logan going to die, uh, soon? Because I can give Tony a call and see what his ETA is..."
On the couch, Wolverine rolled around and moaned a little, clasping his forehead with a very ragged hand. Apart from all the blood, you could almost guess he just had a hangover. Really, you never knew with these superhumans. Everyone had some strange allergy or an extremely inconvenient side-effect to whatever powers they were supposed to have. And if that didn't work out, their enemies never seemed to mind defaulting to senseless violence with blunt instruments.
"Could you? That'd be sweet of ya, doll." Cage wiped the dust off his face with the edge of his t-shirt. "I'd say he's got another fifteen minutes. No big rush."
"Hmm. Would you like some coffee?"
"Shit, you's always thinkin' of us, Peps. Tony don't know how good he got it."
"He'll learn someday."
She went to go make Cage his coffee while dialing Stark's emergency line. He wasn't likely to pick up, probably already being far more aware of why there was a mutant bleeding to death on his couch than she was, no matter where he happened to be at the moment. She wasn't too surprised when she got his voicemail.
"Hi, this is the Iron Man. I'm afraid I can't come to the phone at the moment, but if the Earth is in danger, please leave your name, GPS number and name of the villain attacking you after the beep, and someone from the Avengers will be dispatched to your location momentarily."
"You mean 'shortly'," she told the recording service after the tone, when she had reached the kitchen and was safely out of earshot of Cage and Wolverine. "'Momentarily' means 'for a moment', not 'in a moment'. Logan is dying on your couch and I quit, so come fix him yourself. Thanks. Bye."
She keyed the coffee maker online and set up the pot. Out in the lounge, Pepper heard Cage say, "Oh, hey, man."
...Oh, damn it.
Pepper poked her head out of the kitchen doorway to see Wheeljack's Stark avatar frozen near the foot of the stairs, apparently mistakenly assuming that no further explosions meant it was safe to come down. But it was hardly possible for him to sneak by in clear view of Cage.
"You got here fast, yo." Cage rose from his position kneeling beside Wolverine and dusted his knees. "Hey, we hailed you something like ten times. Why no pick-up? 'Was tough bustin' ass to get punted over here."
Pepper stuck a foot out to prepare to intervene, but Wheeljack, so used to talking without a mouth, kept Stark's expression convincingly neutral when he said, "What's the situation? Apart from him ruining my couch?"
"Shit, like you ain't got money for a dozen more." Cage jerked his thumb at his dying companion. "Special adamantium-targetting radiation, an' I think a cocktail fulla some other stuff. You were closest, we figured you could hook us up cure-wise."
"Er."
Pepper's phone buzzed. She nearly jumped, but dove back into the dark of the kitchen to answer it instead.
It turned out to only be a text message from Stark. It read in its entirety: 'indisposed.'
God. Was he texting in the middle of sex again or something? How had she managed to put up with this animal before?
Pepper angrily flipped open her phone's keypad and began typing a reply. If he wasn't going to put away his neutrino love doll for two seconds to check his messages, she was just going to have to send him a telegram.
In the lounge, Wheeljack had relented under the force of Cage's badgering. "Okay, fine, give me some paper," he said. There was a bit of rummaging as they unearthed some of Pepper's paperwork from under the remains of the coffee table. Then Pepper heard some scribbling.
Pepper hesitated, thumbs poised over the keypad. Maybe if Wheeljack was offering a discreet solution, they could just leave the situation as it was.
"Don't touch anything else in the lab. And destroy the device when you're done," Wheeljack continued, as Pepper went about withdrawing the full coffee pot and locating some cups. "And the diagrams. Burn them."
"Why?" asked Cage.
"Uh. Because it was never meant to exist."
"Man, why you mad scientist types always gotta be so melodramatic?"
Wheeljack sounded like he took that one to heart. "I dunno, I guess it keeps things interesting."
Pepper stepped gracefully into the ruins of the lounge, carrying two cups of coffee. She had no idea who was planning to drink the other, considering she was planning to drag Wheeljack off before he blew his entire cover, but just one cup of coffee lacked symmetry. "Is everything going to be all right?" she asked with what she hoped sounded like the right amount of professionalism.
Cage didn't seem as interested in coffee as he had a minute ago. Plus, his hands were full of Wheeljack's diagrams. Pepper set the cups down on top of a slab of concrete covering the coffee table instead. "I don't see why a brother's gotta build this shit himself," Cage argued. "I don't know widgets from gizmos."
"Sorry, prior engagement," Wheeljack said smoothly. "If you can handle something from Ikea, you can field this. Wash up when you're done." He barely required tugging to embark toward the foyer.
"Drive up to the front," Pepper murmured in the holomatter's ear.
"Already on it," Wheeljack answered quietly. He added, louder, to Cage, "It's all there in the instructions. I'd get on it right now if I were you. Thanks!"
"Sure, but..."
Whatever the extent of Cage's objection may have been, Pepper never did find out. At that moment, a considerable portion of the far wall not already ruined by Cage's entrance was torn off by a very large set of metallic hands.
Cement, steel and glass rained down. A godawful sound tore through the air, and then the thing's legs appeared: blue and black and with something unmistakably like a jet thruster for heels. It crushed most of the floor it landed on.
An earlier Pepper might have screamed. The current Pepper, who needed only to last long enough to get Stark's letter of reference in the morning, merely jumped slightly and shouted for the AI to engage code red defence protocol.
While J.A.R.V.I.S. warmed the flamethrowers up, Cage stashed the diagrams in a pocket and spun around to face the big metal thing coming through the ceiling. Having had more than sufficient practise IDing giant alien robots, Cage wasted little time establishing friend or foe, shouted "Sweet Christmas!" and barrelled straight into the Decepticon's leg.
The force knocked the Seeker off his leg and down on one knee. A further attempt by Cage to push him out the gap in the wall was not as successful: the Seeker merely grunted, digging his fingers into the flooring and climbing further into the room.
"Cute, human," the Seeker rumbled. "But I ain't here for you."
Wolverine, on some incredibly ill-advised second wind, sprang up despite his injuries and did not manage to do much of anything besides snarling before the Decepticon swiped him away with the back of a hand.
"Slag," Pepper heard Wheeljack say. It was a weird word to hear with such force out of Stark's lips. He met her gaze. "Get outside. We need to get you to safety."
"What about you?" she cried.
"Ready and waitin' with the door open, darling," he said, and tugged his arm out of her grasp. He sprinted back towards the remains of the lounge.
In the moment before cognition could catch up, Pepper actually began racing after him. She caught herself and managed to freeze at the edge of the hallway, but couldn't quite bear to turn around and head the other way. It might have been the real Wheeljack that was waiting for her outside, but it was a reasonable likeness of Tony Stark that was running towards a giant killing machine without his armour on.
But the Decepticon did a strange thing when he saw the Stark doll approach. He finished swatting Cage and Wolverine aside and then stopped, leaning down to speak to him.
"You remember our little arrangement, human?" the Seeker rumbled.
Oh, no.
Don't listen to him, Pepper urged silently. Ignore him and explode in his face. Just get it over with. Please...
She had stopped Wheeljack downstairs for a very specific reason: to protect Tony's secrets. If this overgrown plastic model kit just gave the game away, what rationale did she have to fall back on except simple, damnedable curiosity?
Not to mention, her complicity in what Stark had done was going to kill her chances for that new position.
Wheeljack's avatar slowed to a walk. "Of course," he said, climbing over the debris to where the Seeker knelt. "But I didn't think it was worth the property damage."
The tone said everything. Oh god, no. He was figuring it out. He was going to ruin everything.
Knowing she could escape undetected, Pepper slipped down the hallway and out through the foyer. Wheeljack was parked outside as promised-- he had even left the driver side door open. She dove in and slammed the door.
"It's a trap," she told the dashboard, for lack of a better reference point when he was in this form. "Get Luke and Logan out of the way and detonate."
"I'm thinking it's not that simple, princess," Wheeljack's voice returned from, well, somewhere.
He fell silent, probably still speaking with the robot inside. Pepper panicked again. She pulled the door handle, but the door didn't budge. Wheeljack had locked her in.
She pulled at the handle harder, searching vainly for the doorlock. In the end, she hammered on the glass, but it didn't even crack. She touched a bare panel of metal and an electric shock ran through her body. Her body seized briefly, and then the current released her. She fell back into the seat, shuddering.
"Sorry," Wheeljack said lightly. "But I'm keepin' tabs on both of you till I get some answe-- Slag!" he said again, and in the same moment peeled out and screeched down the driveway. The speed pushed Pepper further back into the seat.
"What's going on now?" she demanded, pawing around desperately for a seatbelt. The front gate of the compound, apparently detecting a temp signature on Wheeljack's vehicle form, opened to let him through. He hit the street with a shriek of rubber and sped off up the coast, heading north.
Pepper got her seatbelt latched and leaned closer to the window to look out. She would have missed it if not for the moon, but she could just see what looked to be a blue F-22 jetting across the sky, unmistakably in the same direction as where she and Wheeljack were headed.
Wheeljack was muttering a quiet string of what Pepper guessed were curse words. It occurred to her what must have happened.
"They've kidnapped you?!" she shrieked.
"No," Wheeljack answered, unnaturally calm. "They've kidnapped Tony Stark."
=== Back to Fanfiction > Transformers
===