===
Ironhide and Sunstreaker hauled Jazz from the water together, each pulling one arm. Jazz staggered in the grass and wiped some algae off his casing. Water just never came ala carte on this planet, did it?He surveyed the assembled. They were mostly in one piece. Slingshot had lost part of an arm, Sunstreaker's coolant circulation was still shot, and Prowl was still unconscious. There were surprisingly few scorchmarks on the ground.
"They just sorta up and vanished," Bumblebee explained. "Almost like they were just stopping by to rattle our cage."
"Some rattlin' they did," said Jazz. "I don't think she'll fly again."
This was an agonising thing to have to say. The Autobot navy had never been very large. It was sparkless, but it was sort of true that the military would more readily lose a few hundred soldiers than just one ship. But it was possible to repair her, Jazz was sure of it. If they only had...
"Captain," Bumblebee said anxiously, "where's 'Jack and Ratch'?"
Jazz braced his forehead with a hand. "I ain't sure, Bumbles. I think we oughta count them out of the runnin' for the time being. Better radio up to Hardhead and tell 'im he's got a party of seven to bounce up," he added to Ironhide, who nodded.
"You mean eight," said Sunstreaker.
"We'll get yer brother back from Minnesota soon, 'Streaker, an' Nightbeat too. But first we gotta--"
"No," Sunstreaker insisted. "If you're beaming me up you're beaming both parts of me up, Scotty. Or I'm not going anywhere."
The strange affectation finally clued Jazz in. He looked down near Sunstreaker's feet and found the Headmaster glaring back up at him expectantly.
The Captain shifted awkwardly. "Oh, hey, c'mon, I've read the memo--"
"There's nothing left for the orbital bounce to kill," Hunter said adamantly, in surprisingly coherent Cybertronix. "And if I can't handle it, I'd prefer to find out sooner rather than later."
Jazz nodded, not one to rock the boat, especially since the only boat worth mentioning was in pieces at the bottom of a lake. "Works for me," he said. "Welcome to the crew, kid. Sorry it ain't much to look at."
===
After a while, it was everything Ratchet could do to put one foot after the other.The force of the last of the charges detonating had jettisoned them from the wreckage of Ark-19 and thrown them in the exact opposite direction of Jazz and the Michigan side of the shore. For a while, Wheeljack continued to drag him along at gunpoint, but without his outer armour he soon found himself outmatched by the elements. One of the reason for an outer frame when off Cybertron was that base frames were not hermetically sealed.
So, eventually, it was left to Ratchet to drag Wheeljack's waterlogged body to shore in a secluded part of the Indiana side of the lake. Reaching land, Ratchet dropped Wheeljack on the sand and then collapsed beside him, opening his vents and panting to release some of the built-up heat he had accrued.
Ratchet reached up and felt at the gash in his neck cabling. The water had washed away most of the leakage; he'd have to wait until the surface area dried to apply to mendpatch. With sunset on the approach, that was probably going to take longer than he would care for. Not to mention, all of Wheeljack's parts needed to get vented and properly shaken out, or they'd be wet for cycles.
Well, he could mind a small cut. His companion was in more serious condition, so he'd deal with him first. He sat Wheeljack up against a sand bank and started unscrewing his shoulder linkage.
"Too bad you didn't plan on this part," Ratchet muttered sullenly, nudging some finicky bolts. "Having to get dragged ashore by your own hostage..."
"No, I planned for that," Wheeljack coughed. Water had gotten into his voicebox as well.
Ratchet looked up from Wheeljack's arm to his face, which was fixed gazing skyward. Nothing much he could read there. He rose to go drain the water out of Wheeljack's arm.
Drying out the limbs was easy enough. The torso basically amounted to opening up all his panelling and turning him around a few times until everything dripped out. There was surely a more sophisticated, or at least less comical, way to go about this, but not on a dirty beach with no equipment to speak of. Ratchet was certainly not in the mood to walk all the way back to the ship to see what he could salvage of his medbay. And not that Wheeljack would let him. The first thing the inventor did when Wheeljack had all his pieces put back together was disable Ratchet's legs.
"...Don't you find this a little unnecessary, at this point?" Ratchet complained angrily, stuck in place in the sand.
"Hostage, remember?" Wheeljack rumbled. His vocal emitters wouldn't be back to normal for a while yet. He stood a few metres off and busied himself fiddling with some of his own components... then apparently recalled that his networking settings had been blocked. "Wanna do a quick satellite uplink and let us know where we are?"
Ratchet glowered at him. "A beach," he said spitefully.
"Hah, okay, I deserved that."
The medic shook his head and resigned himself to crawling with his arms. He wanted to get a bit closer inland, out of immediate view for any boats that might pass by.
Wheeljack's solution was to disable his arms, and then sit down on top of him.
Ratchet sighed in exasperation, resting his head back down on the sand. "If you're going to do it, just go ahead," he said. "I'm not going to fight."
His companion peered down at him in shock and then --to Ratchet's surprise-- remorse. "I'm... sorry about what I did the other cycle," he said quietly.
Ratchet demonstrated the degree to which he could not lift his arms. "Yes. I can tell."
"Hostage," Wheeljack reminded.
The medic watched him appraisingly. Oddly, he felt no fear just then.
"You know what you said to Jazz?" Ratchet said coolly. "You're not in control right now."
Wheeljack's hand hesitated over Ratchet's chestplate. He remained motionless like that for a moment, unreadable.
"So when did you decide you were on Stark's side?" Wheeljack demanded.
"The night he told me everything," Ratchet answered. "Something has to happen, 'Jack. Or nothing will get better."
Wheeljack inclined his head, glancing away. Then he slid back onto the sand and turned Ratchet on his side to reconnect his wiring again, more neatly this time than before.
When Wheeljack was finished and had smoothed all his panels shut, Ratchet sat up, flexing his wrist. "Thanks," he said.
Wheeljack grunted, staring at his knees.
The medic nodded. Then he swung his foot into his companion's back.
Wheeljack gurgled as he went down, thrashing and kicking up sand; Ratchet climbed onto his feet and delivered another swift kick to his side, and then another, just for the hell of it. When Wheeljack attempted to get onto his knees, Ratchet grabbed his ankle and pulled him back down, face-first.
The medic knelt down on top of him, wedging a knee into his backstruts. He grabbed one of Wheeljack's struggling hands and twisted the arm around at a severe angle, while the inventor's pleas for mercy increased. The base frame might not have pain receptors, but Ratchet bet his shoulder linkages could appreciate being almost 90 degrees past recommended rotation.
"Vector Sigma! Okay, okay, stop--!"
"You told me once I should teach Stark when to keep his hands to himself," Ratchet growled. "Apparently you needed another lesson yourself."
"I don't! I don't! I get it now! I do! Please don't break me, Ratch', c'mon..!"
Wheeljack finally tore his arm free and started trying to wriggle away. Ratchet twisted him onto his back and pinned him squarely by the shoulders.
Ratchet leaned close, cupping Wheeljack's faceplate with a hand. "You didn't plan on this part, did you?" he asked softly.
Wheeljack meekly shook his head, though Ratchet's hand restricted most movement. His optics were open wide, shining bright and nervous.
So close to him, Ratchet could detect the minute twitches as the water still lingering in Wheeljack's insides made him short-circuit. He was probably feeling light-headed, even a little disoriented. A little bit of a nudge and playing with a few wires and he'd be completely under Ratchet's thumb, if the medic wanted...
...No. He wasn't going to play it that way. What Wheeljack had done could not be undone, and wronging him in return was not going to fix anything.
Wheeljack moved his hand. Ratchet flinched and attempted to stop him, but the inventor still managed to reach up and brush his fingers lightly around the tear in Ratchet's neck cabling. Ratchet tensed immediately, but Wheeljack kept his touch gentle. His gaze had softened.
Finally, Ratchet decided they had both been stupid about all this. He pulled Wheeljack's hand down and sat up, legs braced to either side of his companion's waist. Ratchet wiped the excess fluid off the area and applied the mendpatch he hadn't had the time to administer before.
"Why did you need to discard your entire outer casing?" he said, annoyed. "You looked like a maniac, wandering around uncovered like that."
"Psychological effect," said Wheeljack. "Or actually... I needed something corrosive to short out the wiring on the lock. You know our topical sensors have the highest percentage of imulsium..."
Ratchet held his head. "I have never met a mech with as little regard for his own body as you."
"We're machines," Wheeljack said, nonplussed. "People like you and me just know what all the pieces do. What's funny about it?"
"Your problem is you only see pieces," Ratchet accused. "None of this would have happened if you had only--"
"And what a shame that would be."
"Prowl's going to call us both traitors, you know."
"At least we'll be traitors together," Wheeljack suggested, creeping his hand up Ratchet's thigh.
Ratchet grabbed it and stuck it back in the sand. "I should never have fixed you," he said bitterly. "I should have just let that shrapnel kill you. It wasn't even a Decepticon mine-- it was something from your own workshop."
"And just imagine the people I mighta been able to kill, if you'd just saved the pieces for me to do my research," Wheeljack answered calmly. "Sometimes people are means to an end, Ratch'. That includes me and you, too."
"Am I your means to an end?"
The question hung in space for an eternal moment, during which Ratchet's resolve deteriorated and he began to hate himself for even asking it. A stupid question. A flighty, emotional, undignified question which he had no business even bringing up--
Wheeljack slipped his hand out from under Ratchet's grasp and gently touched his forearm. Like an apology.
Rage, confusion, and a strange sense of betrayal boiled up inside Ratchet all at once. His hands flew to Wheeljack's chestplate and tore open the unlocked casing. He grabbed fistfuls of wires and sent a strong current through his fingertips. Wheeljack lurched. He funnelled the energy through his body and back into Ratchet's arm, which in turn fed it back into Wheeljack's chest. The circuit lasted all of a single burning, fitful microcycle before Ratchet broke contact, panting. He decided there was no other way to end this.
Ratchet opened his chestplate and extracted the adapter cable from a side compartment, that all-purpose cable where everything depended on context. What might they say was the context for this, coupling on a beach on an alien world, bitter and unkind, more enemies than friends?
Wheeljack twisted under the force of the strong current being pushed through his already addled system. He didn't fight it. He opened his connections to Ratchet and let his signal tear through him. They grabbed at arms and legs, struggling and rolling together on the sand even as it got into Wheeljack's joints and under Ratchet's casing.
It recalled every last instance of closeness they'd ever had together, from that cautious first contact to all their later sadism-- the power play, the mind games, the utter recklessness with which they explored each other's bodies. Interfacing to resolve an argument. Interfacing to avoid an argument. Learned behaviours and unlearned inhibitions. The way they could inhabit one another's frames as comfortably as their own, like each had gained another set of armour. It had become as natural as the whirring of his own fans, and ultimately, there was nothing Wheeljack had done that Ratchet was not also guilty of, somewhere along the line.
And in the end-- when it all really, finally came down to it, they could probably kill one another and be happy about it, because at least they'd know they were in good hands right till the end.
Wheeljack's systems crashed first: no surprise, with more of his resources open for the taking. His backstruts arched and the two of them pressed together, hip to hip, as though it were natural.
"I used you too," Ratchet struggled out, as Wheeljack shuddered against him.
"It's okay," Wheeljack said, resetting. He drew a clumsy hand up to the back of Ratchet's head and brushed along a seam. "Talk human to me," he murmured.
Ratchet did. There were some things that their own language just didn't have words for.
===
Soon after Ratchet's overload had finally abated and he could safely reboot, he encountered a silent voice in the back of his head.-Wow.-
Ratchet sat bolt upright in the sand, jerking the adapter cable free. -You!- he shouted at Stark across the silent channel. -How did you--?-
-You forgot to monitor the connection status. I didn't want to interrupt.-
-You saw everything?!-
-That was the coolest, nerdiest sex I've ever seen,- Stark professed. -Do you always do it like that? With the deliberate overloading of things and faking out fluid responses? Or does that fall under 'special occasions'?-
"You all right, Ratch'?" Wheeljack asked, concerned.
Ratchet ground the gears in his jaw. -Out!- he ordered Stark, shutting down the signal. -Don't let me ever catch you snooping again!-
-Wait! Can't I just get some clarification about the firewall setti-
The line closed down. Ratchet changed his frequency permissions for good measure. It no longer mattered if he and Stark were in contact, after all. They'd be seeing each other in a few decicycles anyway.
Ratchet felt Wheeljack's concerned optics on him and looked down to offer a reassuring smile. It didn't altogether take.
"That was the monkey?"
"Yes. The stupid mutant ape." Ratchet sighed and settled back down on the sand.
Wheeljack rolled over and climbed on top of him. He was almost unnervingly small in this form, if Ratchet dared to think about it. "So... are you and he...?"
"Primus, no. And he knows why."
"Heh. Was he jealous?"
"He does occasionally accept when he's out of his league. When I told him how long the two of us had had a contract..." Ratchet trailed off. He remembered what Wheeljack had said three cycles ago in the brig. "Well, I guess that's up to you."
His mate watched him intently. "Prowl gave you the forms, huh?"
Ratchet scoffed. "If you've been helping yourself to my memory banks again..."
"He's been waitin' to do that for megacycles. He never did like the idea of two of his mechs having an exclusivity agreement. In his mind, contracts are a form of collusion. Here, show me the disk."
Ratchet sought through his storage compartments until he located Prowl's datadisk. Wheeljack took it and sat up to begin dismantling it.
"Ha. See? He's already filled it out," he said, reading straight from the drive. "And he's installed a hijack protocol to immediately stamp it with your signature the moment you logged into it. And he says I scam people." Wheeljack tossed the disk into the lake. "Feh. That'll teach him to go around playin' script kiddie. Slaghead control freak."
Ratchet watched the drive sink like a disproportionately heavy pebble. "So," he said, confused, "what you said the other cycle..."
"I was angry, for Primus's sake. Nothing made sense. I've done a lot of figuring out since then. Anyway," he added, "d'you think someone's got a scraplet's chance in water of impressing me if they can't even survive one of my inventions?"
Ratchet rolled his optics. "It isn't 'your invention'. Orbital bounce tech was an idea you had that you couldn't get to work. If it wasn't for Perceptor--"
"So who killed her, me or him?" Wheeljack interrupted. "She breaks too easily; I don't want her. She's got no staying power. At least, not enough for me."
If this was true or just Wheeljack's guilt prompting him to distance himself, Ratchet decided he could accept it. At least it meant Pepper was out of the picture.
He pulled Wheeljack back down into the sand with him again.
===
She-Hulk had a fresh suit and an espresso waiting when Pepper Potts exited the hospital. They had a S.H.I.E.L.D. humvee ready at the entrance.Pepper grimaced when she saw this. She had been prepared to call her mom or maybe the cleaning lady to come pick her up. After a week being monitored by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents badly disguised as nurses, she had been looking forward to trudging around in house slippers and doing paperwork again. This car looked distinctly like it was headed for an airbase and then from there on a direct flight to Washington, D.C. for a long and uncomfortable debriefing.
"If I'm going anywhere, it's back to Malibu," she argued, as she and Jennifer rode in the back seat. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent driving didn't even appear to hear her. "Wherever Tony's been, I'll bet he hasn't kept up with the board of directors. His stock price was the ugliest thing I'd seen in years when I finally got hold of a newspaper."
"Shit," said the driver. Apparently he had been listening.
"Mayhew!" She-Hulk barked at him, making him cringe. "Was my directive not clear enough for you?"
"S-sorry, ma'am, she must've gotten it from another patient..."
Pepper looked between them and attempted to feel surprised and wronged, and found that she couldn't. It had been obvious since her internment that she was being protected from learning what was going on with Tony. But just what was going on? Now that she was out, couldn't she finally know?
"Listen, your agenda doesn't interest me," she told She-Hulk. "I know something must have happened with the Autobots, or none of you would be on high alert like this. But life goes on, and so does Tony's business enterprise. He's always left the company under my management in his absence, ever since Stane went nuts. His stockholders--"
"Pepper, try to focus," She-Hulk said. "We have two warring factions of mechanoids on this planet and now neither side is our ally. If you have any anxieties about Tony's company, it should be regretting that he doesn't make weapons anymore. You want to know what we've been trying to hide from you? A good reason to fax in your resignation. You're going to a federal bomb shelter, and that's final."
"Miss Walters," the driver protested.
"Shut up, Mayhew, you're already incompetent." She returned her attention to Pepper. "I'm sorry, Pepper," she said, more gently; "it seems we've all been a worse judge of character than we led ourselves to believe. After Tony sent his hologram around to my house and stole my case file, I've got the hunch he really is as bad as the Autobots are saying."
A hologram? Pepper's brow creased, but she decided now wasn't the time for theories.
"Whatever the case may be, he's doing his best to alienate the few friends he has left," She-Hulk continued. "Cap's given up trying to reason with him. We can't even find him. We know he's putting together something big for the Decepticons, but we can't get it shut down, even with a freeze on his accounts. If this is all a joke, I'm still waiting for the punchline."
Pepper kept her gaze focused on her lap. She could not have imagined her absence could be this devastating. It seemed Tony really wasn't capable of lasting ten minutes without her. She bet he had started drinking again too.
He was a good person. She knew he was. Perhaps a high-functioning autistic with maturity issues and an exaggerated libido, but he wasn't evil. Even if the facts she knew about Project Gillian were almost too compromising for words. There had to be a greater good somewhere... right?
She-Hulk's massive green hand patted her shoulder comfortingly. "You're not the first person he's disappointed," she said levelly. "It was probably a good thing you got out when you did. No attachments."
Pepper laughed, once, mirthlessly. "I wonder if he's checked his voicemail yet..."
"Hm?"
Before she could clarify, Mayhew interrupted from the front seat. "Miss Walters?" he quavered. "Um. I'm sorry, I thought we had a full tank, but..."
The giant green lawyer tsked. "I knew we should have taken the hovercar. All right, let's stop at the next station we find."
The next station turned out to be in the middle of nowhere. Pepper hadn't realised they'd gotten out of LA so quickly. This was probably outside Palmdale, meaning their destination was likely Edwards Air Force Base, or just a bunker underneath a dry lakebed somewhere.
Mayhew pulled the armoured black humvee up to a dust-covered gas pump and shut off the engine. He started to climb out of the driver's seat.
"Uh-uh," She-Hulk told him. "Stay here. I'll go deal with the pump."
"Ma'am, with all respect, they're sort of, er, conservative around here..."
"For God's sake, Mayhew. That's why you take people to court for discrimination." She-Hulk opened the door on her side and slid out, the humvee sagging and rocking as she did so. "Honestly, if there were a few more lawyers in the world and a few less guns..."
Jennifer shut the door behind her. She walked around to get the pump going, then went to terrify whatever hapless store owner she could encounter inside. Pepper and Mayhew sat in silence.
As the needle on the tank passed the half point, Pepper said. "Is it okay if I stretch my legs?"
Mayhew, having already suffered verbal abuse for fairly innocent transgressions today, said, "Oh, geez, Miss Potts, I dunno..."
"I'll just be outside the car by your window. I'll never leave your sight."
"Well... okay, but just for a bit, all right?"
Pepper opened her door and slipped out. She wandered back and forth a few paces, being sure to stay in view of Mayhew's mirrors. She stretched her arms and smoothed her hair.
It didn't take long at all for Mayhew to get agitated. He rolled down the driver side window and poked his buzz-cut head out. "Okay, Miss Potts, I think you better come back in now."
Pepper approached his door and leaned at the edge of the window. "Do you think I could ride shotgun?" she asked innocently.
"Well--"
"All the back windows are tinted. We're driving past the poppy fields soon, right? I really like California poppies."
"I-I don't know if they're--"
"Can I tell you a secret?" she said quietly, knotting her brow and glancing nervously toward the door of the gas station. "I'm really claustrophobic. I don't want to be stuck in some bomb shelter for God knows how long. I didn't sign up for this; I'm just his secretary. I understand what you have to do, but... can you give me this one thing? I mean, it would mean so much to me..."
Mayhew's resolve deteriorated. "Um. Okay," he said, glancing away nervously. "But if she comes back and starts yelling..."
Pepper skipped around to the other side of the car and into the front passenger seat before Mayhew could finish his doomsday scenario. She smoothed her skirt and beamed happily at him.
He grinned weakly in return, then glanced at his side mirror. "Oh, you left the other door open," he muttered. "Let me just go and close that..."
"You could take the nozzle out too," Pepper said helpfully. She indicated to the needle on the dashboard. "One less thing for Jen to do."
"Oh-- right." He nodded quickly.
She waited until he had gotten out completely, closed the back door, and conscientiously disengaged the gas nozzle, before pulling the driver side door shut and hitting the power lock. Naturally, Mayhew heard it, and spun around, but by then Pepper had already climbed into the driver's seat and started the ignition.
===
She-Hulk was pleased with how smoothly this transaction was going. She hadn't even smashed anything. A little snarling about Constitutional rights and the old man was more than happy to sell her gasoline. Okay, maybe it was more the snarling than the rights part that did it...Then she heard a sound she really hadn't wanted to hear, namely, a car starting, and looked up to see the humvee peeling out back onto the freeway, with Mayhew pathetically sprinting behind it.
She-Hulk left her receipt half-unsigned and raced out into the parking lot. The humvee was already gone, and she didn't at all have the shoes on to chase after it. She found Mayhew doubled over and panting at the side of the road and hauled him upright by his collar.
"I don't know what sort of comically stupid and obvious ploy you fell for, but you are so demoted," she told him furiously. "Now get on the line with HQ and tell them to lock onto her GPS."
"Ah-- aw, geez," Mayhew whimpered, cringing. "I left my phone in the car, ma'am!"
She-Hulk thrust him back down onto the asphalt and pulled out her own cell. No service. Typical.
"Well?" she barked at the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. "Get inside and get on the landline. Go!"
"Y-yes ma'am!"
What's your game, honey? She-Hulk wondered privately, gazing down the road where Pepper had just disappeared. Are you in on his scheme too, or do you wish he'd just trusted you more?
===
Pepper used the onboard system to plot a route back to LA. The satellite connection kept phasing in and out, but if she could get back onto the 405 then it would be smooth sailing from there. Of course, it was a bit much to hope she could outpace any reinforcements She-Hulk sicced on her.She tried using the agent's cell phone to call Stark, but service for that wasn't steady either. Anyway, by the sound of things, Tony wasn't near a phone these days. But if she could just get back to home territory, maybe there was something she could figure out.
High desert spread out all around her. There was no development this far out, just a straight line from the edge of town to the mountains; few tributary roads, and at the moment, no other cars.
Something still managed to cut her off, though. Namely, a flaming meteorite.
Pepper slammed on the brakes and twisted the steering wheel hard to the right, just narrowly stopping short of the ten-foot trench suddenly gouged out of the road. The meteorite bounced and skidded into the baked bedrock a twenty or so metres from the highway, rolled, stopped, and smouldered.
Pepper stared at it, wide-eyed, mouth open. Her heart, probably not the most durable thing in the world right then, pounded so fiercely in her chest she thought it might pop. Of all the stupid, random--
--And then the meteorite moved.
She watched, dumbfounded, as the metallic mass shook free the blackened, smoking wreckage which encased it and, slowly, stood up on two legs.
===
Ultra Magnus peeled off the last scorching piece of metal from around his shoulders and shook his head, acclimating to the new gravity.He ran a quick diagnostic. A few spots of damage, but negligible for the moment. He tapped at his commlink until it came online, wiring him with the nearest Code relay.
"Encountered satellite scrambling on approach to atmo," he reported to the home log. "Guidance systems knocked offline; have lost transport. Landing area approximately 89 local kilometres off target. Will proceed by stealth."
He dug around in the wreckage until he found the preserved compartment containing the CIC-issue converter. He set it out on a flat surface and activated it. An antenna shot up and started scanning the area.
It beeped a lot sooner than expected. It seemed there was actually something within visible distance. Ultra Magnus used his remaining optic to follow the converter's indicator to the source: yes, that looked acceptable. He confirmed the conversion protocol and shut his raster feed off.
When he turned it on again, his kibble had been acceptably reconfigured. He used a sidearm to destroy the converter, as well as anything still discernible from his ship. He identified the roadway, approached it, and transformed.
There. Inconspicuous.
Magnus's sensors reported something small and organic scrabbling at his casing. To his surprise, it got inside him with relative ease. He switched to the holomatter's view to take a better look.
===
Pepper froze, coming face to face with her exact likeness.Three lines of thought shot through her mind in rapid succession: first, that her hair apparently looked terrible; second, that she had never really understood the true significance of the Uncanny Valley until that moment; and third, that she had already died once, so there probably wasn't much else a doppelganger could to do her.
She sat herself firmly in the passenger seat and closed the door.
"Okay, I have a good idea why you're here," she told the hologram. "You're here to help someone, but which side? Because depending on the answer, I think I can help you."
The hologram looked at her, unblinking. It didn't open its mouth, but something resembling language came out. It sounded like modem noise crossed with Mandarin.
Great. All the aliens in the galaxy, and she got the one that didn't speak English.
"Autobot?" she tried. "Decepticon? Come on..." Apparently even the faction names were different in their language. She frowned and sought around in her pockets until she found some of the papers from her hospital discharge and a pen. She folded one over to its blank side and tried to remember how the symbols looked so she could draw them.
She showed the paper to her doppelganger, pointing to each insignia with the tip of her pen. "Autobot?" she attempted again. No response. "Decepticon?"
The hologram reached out and plucked the pen from between Pepper's fingers. It drew a fat X across both symbols.
Well. That answered everything and nothing.
The question itself seemed to be of interest to the robot, however, because then Pepper heard the doors lock. A few seconds later, the car started moving, though the hologram didn't make much of an effort to appear as though it were driving. It kept its hands at 9 and 3, but didn't bother with the pedals.
After two or three minutes of Pepper struggling to undo the locks or break her way out, the hologram flickered and then said, in a neutral, uninflected tone, "Potts, Virginia. Female, 13280 local cycles old, Caucasian breed, Homo sapiens sapiens. You are in the employ of Stark, Anthony, correct?"
Pepper tried not to gawk. Was that what she sounded like? It was so nasally.
"...How come you didn't talk before?" she managed.
"I had not yet downloaded your language to my autotranslator," the hologram explained. "You do not speak the dominant language of this planet. I was unprepared. I did not come with the intention to interact with native life forms."
"Except for my boss?"
"Anthony Stark is in violation of the Code of Interplanetary Conflict Charter Section 5, Paragraph 18, Corollary 2. I have been sent to collect. You will tell me all that you know about your employer."
They reached the foothills. But they started heading North, away from Los Angeles. The robot had a destination in mind-- and it wasn't Malibu.
"You'll have my full co-operation," Pepper said quickly. "But in exchange--"
"There is no exchange," the hologram said curtly. "There is nothing to barter. Anthony-Stark-alias-Iron-Man is about to bring a war to your planet which will devastate its native populations. For the good of your species, you will tell me everything I need to know."
"Look, if you even expect me to answer that," Pepper objected, "you need to tell what he's been doing."
===
Megatron was not happy.Part of it was the fact that Stark had arrived late to a summons. Sabotaging that CIC agent's transport had taken longer than expected, as had cooking lunch in zero gravity. Megatron did not need to know about either event.
"You promised me a working prototype!" Megatron snarled at the human. "We agreed on yestercycle!"
Stark had the holomatter stick a hand in its pocket. This was a greater feat of realtime rendering than Megatron would ever know.
"There were some holdups. Doctor Fujiyama at the Tokyo facility had some last-minute issues doing what he was told," he explained levelly, in Cybertronix. The autotranslator was working quite well. "It's since been taken care of; things are proceeding smoothly now. Come on; a machine like you should be used to a few delays here and there. It's nothing to worry about."
Megatron growled. "I do not suffer delays, human, just as I do not suffer fools. If you believe you can simply continue to try my patience, you will find it quite short indeed." He paced back and forth a little, his footfalls making the floor rumble. "Now the Autobots have retreated to their orbital, meaning that we engage them on their terms. This was not part of the arrangement!"
"You wanna get them excited, I can do that for you," Stark volunteered. "Name a place. I'll deliver. You won't even need to provide air cover."
"And leave you unmonitored? Don't make me laugh, Stark. You will be chaperoned, and as for the device--"
"It's perfect," Stark insisted. "And more importantly, it's politically untouchable. Provided you follow through with what we agreed on."
This granted him an intense, suspicious glare. But Stark was used to those at this point. More importantly, he could make the avatar stare right back with the best poker face in the world.
"We will see, Stark," said Megatron, with a tone that was more menacing than reassuring. "Let us say it remains contingent on your future performance."
Ha. Idiot, Stark thought. Pretty soon you'll stake so much pride in this undertaking that you'll think it was your idea in the first place.
"A time and a location, Commander," he told the leader of the Decepticons, ducking his head in a brief, servile bow. "And this planet will be yours before the sun sets on Oregon."
Finally, Megatron cracked a wry, malicious smirk. "What prompts a creature to forsake his own species, Anthony Stark?"
"Couldn't tell you. If you ask me, I'm doing mankind a favour. It just can't appreciate it."
This seemed to strike more of a chord than Stark had anticipated. A little something from the robot's past, perhaps.
"I leave the choice of a location to you," Megatron decided, regarding Stark with slightly more approval now. "Somewhere interesting, with variable elevation, to best demonstrate your contributions to Decepticon technology. Let's say one decicycle to sunset. To give you some extra incentive."
Stark saluted. "You won't be disappointed, my lord."
If it weren't for the holomatter, Stark was sure he would have choked on the last two words. As it was, it was kind of funny to be able to say it with a straight face. With nothing further to discuss, Megatron dismissed him. Stark guided the avatar out of the bridge and down the hall, to where Thundercracker was waiting to chauffeur him back to his fake safehouse.
His plan was so close to completion, he could practically reach out and touch it. As far as he cared, nothing would ever surpass what he was about to accomplish.
And he was doing it for mankind. That hadn't been a lie.
He was a second-rate superhero. Not even super, really. But he could be a first-rate villain if need be, and right now that was exactly what this planet, including all visiting sentient mechanoids, was asking for, even if they didn't realise it.
Megatron wanted his final confrontation on Earth to start in about five hours. That didn't leave much time to get everything put together. He'd start with the relay stations, and then get out of this damn satellite to go have a bath and a shave. Then a quick jaunt over to Tokyo, and then... Hm, what would be a good place? Something remote. Something that favoured airborne combat. Somewhere fun.
"Let me ask you," he said to Thundercracker, as the jet rolled closer to the makeshift access ramp near the base runway: "where do you head off to when you're shirking patrol?"
"Hey. I don't ever--"
Stark, guiding the avatar into Thundercracker's cockpit, slid a finger over a seam and gave the Seeker a little jolt of static.
"...Arizona, maybe," Thundercracker said, more quietly.
So domesticated. To think that a week ago they hadn't even been friends.
"Then you'd know all the good spots, right?" Stark asked, grinning.
===
Ultra Magnus's speech patterns grew more natural by the time they reached Tehachapi.He had explained along the way that the autotranslator was adaptive, scanning human media resources via nearby broadcasts to deduce idiosyncrasies and apply them back to the translation, thus better capturing his real voice. Pepper thought he sounded like a cop, which was probably appropriate.
Now, standing outside a thrown-together little cabin on a hill in the mountains, Magnus pulled a visor down over his optics and scanned the view.
"Hm. Heavy energon signature," he murmured. "And a reinforced structure running down quite a ways. He's certainly made himself comfortable."
Pepper wandered into the shack. There were reliefs of recent footprints in the dust, but not Tony's shoe size. There were two coffee mugs and a pot soaking in a bucket of water in the sink, and ashes in the stove.
"I don't even know why he bought this place," she said, leaning out a window to peer up at Magnus, who was still conducting his survey. "It's too exposed to be a good fallout shelter."
"Been in a few, huh?"
"The world always seems ready to blow up, but it never does."
"It's not a shelter," said Magnus, flipping up the visor into his helmet plating. "It's a mine. We're standing above a major Ore-13 deposit. Your planet has a lot of them. And they're all owned by Tony Stark."
"What's Ore-13?"
"A super-potent variant of an element found on my species' original homeworld. It's viable as an energy source. The Decepticons are doing whatever they can to monopolise it."
"But why?" Pepper asked. "For profit?"
Ultra Magnus shook his head, gazing at a distant mountain face. "Ostensibly, to power their military," he said. "In theory, even though the Decepticons have the resources to engage the Autobots in a hot war and win, they'd prefer to do it in a way that serves as a deterrent for other species."
Pepper glanced back at the interior of the cabin. "But you said Tony owned all of these deposits."
"That's right."
Come to that, Stark had been buying up a lot of remote tracts of land and obscure properties in the past few years. How many more had subterranean structures built into them? Had he actually dug something up?
Magnus deployed his Pepper-doll avatar and joined the real Pepper in the kitchen. She pointed at the sink. "I detect a minor electrical current connected to those taps," Magnus said, using the avatar's female voice modulation to speak. She had already mastered lifelike gesture and lip movement, but it only served to make her look even more alien. "Go try turning one of them."
Pepper, having had enough of electrocution, didn't budge. "Why can't you?" she asked stubbornly.
"It's most likely some kind of bioreader," Magnus explained. "You make a better Miss Potts than I do. Admittedly these holomatter models are pretty crude."
Pepper thought privately that she had come into contact with some rather sophisticated ones, but didn't mention this. She brushed past the Pepper-doll and lifted a hand close to the hot water knob.
She touched it experimentally with her finger. Not even a bit of static. She gave it a firmer touch. Still nothing. Finally, Pepper twisted the knob a quarter-turn to the left.
This had more of an effect.
The Pepper-doll stepped out of the way so that she and the trap door beneath her would not have a conflict of interest relating to gravity. She stood at the edge of the revealed stairwell and peered down.
"It seems he trusts you," said Magnus. "Is there anything of his that you don't have access to?"
"What he's thinking," Pepper answered quietly.
"I detect electrical activity below. Something down there is online." The holomatter took a first step down. "Wait here."
"No," Pepper said abruptly, climbing down after her. "This still involves me."
The Pepper-doll gave her an appraising look. Did she really arch her eyebrows like that? "All right," Magnus said. "But don't try anything clever."
They descended together, Magnus's hologram taking point. After a while, the spiralling stairs started to seem endless, made all the worse because Ultra Magnus forbade Pepper from speaking. This left her with staring at the back of her own head and trying not to think too hard about why she was doing this.
Was this really the best way to reach Tony? Could she even help him now? If what everyone was saying was true, did she even want to?
As they neared a platform halfway down along the stairwell, the Pepper-doll motioned to stop. "There's a series of doors up ahead," she said, speaking quietly but clearly, as though Magnus had simply turned the volume down on her voice. "More bioreaders. You go first."
"Is Tony--"
"Ssh."
Pepper grimaced and did was she was ordered, brushing past the hologram shoulder to the metal grate platform. It sat before a modest-looking steel door, fixed with a palm scanner. Pepper placed her hand in the device, and felt a warm buzz as the scan light ran beneath the glass. The door beyond them slid silently back and revealed yet another door.
There were branching pathways as they progressed, but Magnus's scanners ordered them straight ahead. Most of the facility was offline, it seemed, but for a distant energy source which the hologram insisted was getting closer the longer they walked. Finally, they came to a stop.
Pepper scanned around the final door. No cameras or scanning terminals. Eventually, she noticed a tiny microphone jutting out from the door frame.
"Here?" she asked softly, hoping it was quiet enough for Magnus to pick up beside her, and not loud enough for the mic.
She was wrong. She heard the dead bolts clunk and slide back.
Pepper jumped and spun, in time to see the doors begin to pull apart, and in the gap between them she recognised a familiar suit and thinning head of hair. The hair started to turn, just as it occurred to Pepper that there were two of her standing here, and Magnus's holomatter appeared as though she wouldn't move for all the world.
In a panic, Pepper dashed to the side, pressing into a corner out of sight of Stark. The Pepper-doll stayed put.
From within, there was an awkward, confused little query: "...Pepper?"
The hologram shifted her expression, her eyes growing wide and emotional. She dashed forward into the room, her heels clicking realistically on the floor plating.
There was something like a rush of fabric and then stillness. Was she... hugging him?
"You're okay!" Stark exclaimed, sounding startled. "Hey, wow. I don't know what to say..."
"I've been so worried," the Pepper-doll said, her voice muffled, as though it were pressed against Stark's shoulder. "God. Don't do that to me again, vanishing like that. If you did, I don't know if I--"
She dropped off abruptly, save for a brief 'mmf!'; it was followed by what sounded like rapid breathing through the nose, and a little more rustle of clothing.
Hidden out of sight of the door, the real Pepper's mouth fell open. She covered it with her hands before something uncontrollable squeaked out. He was not-- Magnus was not actually--!
No, it was worse than that. Poor Ultra Magnus was a victim of severe culture shock, as evidenced by the terrified fumbling as though the hologram was doing her best not to break down into panic. Stark was the real issue-- he thought the hologram in his arms was real, and his first instinct was to kiss her?!
Tony hadn't made passes at her since the Stane incident. Clearly, he'd gotten bored of her, and gone back to his old habits. This had been fine for so long. Why was he choosing now to change his mind, just when she'd reached a crisis with her own feelings? Why couldn't he have done something before she'd slept with Wheeljack? Why couldn't he have said something sooner?
And why was Magnus not putting a stop to it?!
Pepper pressed her palms against her eyes, not even wishing to catch Stark and the holomatter's shadows being cast across the floor. Her ears twinged as she heard Stark draw a breath and part their lips.
There was a pause, which seemed to drag out for eternity. And then Stark said, "You're not Pepper."
Pepper dropped her hands down, eyes snapped open wide. She almost turned around, almost peeked around the edge of the door-- but then the Pepper-doll said, "Tony, come on, that's a bad joke."
"Show me an exact copy of Pepper-- same voice, same face, same mannerisms, down to the letter-- and I'd still know it wasn't her. As it is, I know some animatronics at Disneyland with better design than this. So just drop the act and tell me what you want."
Magnus's avatar discarded most of her affected tone. Her heels clicked on the floor, suggesting they had moved apart from each other again. "I'm an agent of the Code of Interplanetary Conflict," she said rigidly. "I'm here to place you under arrest. Please come quietly."
"What have you done with Pepper?"
"She's unconnected to this case."
Pepper's brow knitted. Was Magnus covering for her? Why?
"Bullshit," said Stark. "I know how you scan for avatars. You're either a genius like Wheeljack or you need to have actually come in contact with her. Where is she? If you even think about hurting her--"
"You can ensure her safety by co-operating with us," Magnus interrupted calmly. "Stand down, Stark."
"If Pepper knew what I was doing, she wouldn't want me to stand down for anyone, including her."
"Miss Potts would prefer you put the lives of billions of your own species at risk?"
"Pepper would get it. You can't. No major loss-- in a few hours, everyone's going to see it my way anyway."
"You're familiar with holomatter," Magnus said, adopting a more menacing tone. "Do you know what completely overloading it would do to this facility, and you with it?"
Pepper stopped just short of gasping. She hadn't forgotten some of the things Wheeljack had said about these holograms. Was Magnus seriously threatening to explode his avatar, with her as some acceptable casualty? That seemed uncharacteristic of him. A bluff, then-- but would Tony spot it?
"Do your worst," Stark replied mildly. "I'm not really here."
There was a brief pause. "Neutrinos," Magnus said after a couple seconds, sounding somewhere between shocked and disgusted. "Finally, solid evidence that you've stolen from the Autobots. But how did you get past the scanners in this form?"
"When I steal IP, I steal from the best. I'm all finished here, by the way, so go right ahead with the blowing yourself up thing, if you want. The only thing I had left to do was send a message to the Autobots, but you can do that part for me, can't you?" His shadow, stretched across the floor, half-turned and gestured with an arm toward the flickering console. "See these co-ordinates? Let them know we're doing a test run there later today, 1.1 decicycles from now. You got that all logged?"
"And what should we tell Miss Potts," Magnus asked coldly, "when she wonders why you chose to be gunned down rather than play by rules that have so far worked for everyone?"
Stark fell silent for a moment. "You might remind her that I didn't hire her to-- No. You know what? Let's keep it simple. Tell her that I l--"
Pepper couldn't hear it. She wouldn't. She closed her hands over her ears and shut her eyes.
She kept them closed, the only sound her frantic, amplified heartbeat echoing in her ears, until a plastic hand grabbed her wrist and forced it down. She snapped her eyes open to meet her own stern face glaring back at her.
"That wasn't very pleasant for me," the Pepper-doll informed her. Stark's shadow was gone. "And now I have business elsewhere. Try to stay out of trouble till I get back."
And then she vanished as well.
The blood that had been pumping so rapidly in Pepper's ears suddenly drained right out of her. She leaned back against the wall and slid down it until she sat huddled on the floor, dizzy and confused and completely alone.
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