tushanshu_logs | Catch All for September

Stark Industries wasn’t unfamiliar territory to Korra at all. She had visited it plenty of times when Mako worked there and located Tony in no time at all. “Hey, Tony! Hope you don’t mind me being here.“

Seeing him being around her age was something she was still getting used to, but it wasn’t as weird as it was the first time she saw him.

“This is it.“ Of course that was it, the scaled model of the Enterprise took both hands to hold and would have been impossible to miss. The lights flickered and the soft sounds of the ship kept cutting in and out. From the ‘sssh’ of a door closing to a hail frequency.

"Hey! No, it's cool, come on in," Tony says, somewhat distractedly. He's got the armor laid out in front of him for some minor repairs, but it's nothing that can't wait. "Just watch out for the... uh, everything. Sorry, I'm still getting organized." The lab is currently a maze of half-finished equipment and tangled wires and cables.

He hops up, pulling his stool over to a less cluttered workspace and grabbing another one for Korra. And then he takes his first good look at what she's actually holding.

"Oh, man," he says, a grin spreading on his face. "You have got to be kidding me. Is that the Enterprise?"

Were it not for spending most of her life training in martial arts and bending, Korra would've been a bit more concerned about making her way over to him. Though she did have to shake a wire loose from her boot, but she wasn't bothered much by it.

The instant she kicked it off, she gave Tony a pleasantly surprised look.

"Yeah! You've seen it before?" That's something that she never would have guess and she instantly finished rushing over to the stool he had for her, holding it up proudly.

"Have you been inside it? It's huge!" It didn't even cross her mind to explain how she knew that.

"Oh, yeah, my dad's pretty into Star Trek. He loves all that old-school sci-fi stuff," Tony says with a chuckle. "...Uh, no, I've never been inside it." There are sometimes full-scale replicas of the bridge at conventions, but that's not really Tony's thing. He'd rather spend a weekend doing real science.

He carefully takes the miniature ship from Korra and examines it. "So, what's the matter with the NCC-1701?"

"I'm not exactly, sure but it's been on the fritz for a while now. But I'm thinking it might the battery?" She leans forward and points to where the warp core reactors should be. Or at least, she thought that's where the battery would be placed and she gave shrug paired with a weak grin. It was all a mystery to her.

"So what's Star Trek? I don't think Jim ever mentioned anything like that." Korra sat down, asking the question sincerely and honestly.

The battery that's like the one in the other Tony's heart? [He peers at the spot she's pointing to, but he's not going to be able to tell much of anything until he gets the little model open.] I'm going to have to take it apart - that okay with you? I promise I'll put it back together just like I found it. It's probably just a loose wire or the battery running low, so I don't think I'll have to mess with her too much.

[While he's scrutinizing the model, trying to figure out how best to pop it open, he explains,] Oh, Star Trek is the TV show the Enterprise is from. I guess you don't have it in your universe. [He pauses, brows furrowing, then asks,] ...do you even have TV where you're from? What is your universe like? [He's learned by now to take pretty much nothing like that for granted.]

[Her guess is it works like Tony's RT node, but she nods at the question, waving her hand like it's no big deal. After all, he's a genius with technology judging by the tinkering she's interrupted. But she does make a mental note to get the holographic display of the ins and outs of the Enterprise.]

We don't have TV back home, that's for sure, just radio. I've never heard of Star Trek before. But according to everyone else, my world is kind of like everyone else's technology wise. Only eighty or ninety years older or something like that.

[She chuckles.] Which is kind of weird since there's people from my home that are from the past.

[Tony nods, looking interested, but not surprised. Everybody he's met here, from what he can tell, comes from approximately parallel times, with a margin of error of a century or two. Korra's on the earlier end of the scale.]

Well, then, you have about... forty more years to wait for Star Trek, [he says with a laugh.

He thinks he's located all the cleverly hidden little screws now, and he goes to work loosening them.] So, you were friends with the other Tony...? How well did you know him?

[Okay, yeah, he's totally curious about his alternate selves. Can you blame him?]

[Fifty-eight years old, Korra hasn't thought that far ahead yet and it shows when she gives a slightly befuddled look.]

I guess I knew him all right. We went flying, I mean he flew helping me use my glider for the first time. But he also made me that encryption for the console. But we had a good friendship I think. He told me about how his armor keeps alive, the tiny nano machines that came after Extremis.

[She pauses to look at Tony, gauge if she says the word correctly or if he even knows what she's talking about.]

I offered to heal him, but he said it probably wouldn't have worked. [And she began to collect the small screws so they'd all be in one place.] He was one of the people I knew I could trust.

[Tony's hands still, and he looks up at Korra with an expression that's a mix of alarm, curiosity, and incredulity.]

Man, my future sounds messed up. [~~I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU EXPECTED, TONY.~~] The armor was keeping him alive? Was he... Did he have to stay inside it? Like, permanently? What was wrong with him that Extremis couldn't fix it?

Edited 2014-09-19 03:52 (UTC)

[Korra can't argue that, not when she's learned a lot more about Tony than she probably should have.]

No, the armor was inside him. He had these tiny machines that could make armor out of nowhere.

[She traced the edge of the ship with her finger, looking at the round shape.]

He told me it's like a wheel. As long as the wheel keeps going around, it produces force or energy. The machines make sure his wheel keeps spinning. Without them, his body won't do that on its own. His heart might stop...

[Something she always had in the back of her mind when she saw Tony.]

I don't know much about Extremis, he just told me it's what he was using before.

[Tony doesn't even know what to say to that. Nanomachines? Inside him? That could generate the armor out of thin air? Holy shit. Holy shit. Like, on the one hand: SO freaky. But on the other hand: that's fucking incredible.

He still doesn't understand Why Extremis wouldn't fix the other Tony's heart. Was the serum different? Did it not affect him the same way? Maybe Other Tony got the technopathy, but not the healing factor.]

...Wow. [Tony says eventually.] Now I'm really bummed we missed each other. Other Me must have some pretty wild stories to tell.

[And some wild science to share. Dammit, get back here, Other Tony, this Tony wants to know how the heck you made your armor out of nanobots!]

Yeah, he could probably tell you more. I'm not a tech genius like you guys. But he said that I'd fit in where he's from, not sure how the other Avengers would feel about that though.

[Seeing him be that intrigued makes her wonder just what's different, why he doesn't have the heart problem the other ones had.]

[Tony's shaken off his ~~SCIENCEGASM~~ shock, and has gotten back to work on the Enterprise.]

The other what? [he asks, as he undoes the final screw and starts to gently wiggle the top open.]

[Korra gives an unsure smile, raising one eyebrow.]

Avengers. That team of super heroes he’s a part of. [She looks at the circuitry surrounding the perfectly scaled model of the bridge, chairs and all.] But I guess you haven’t joined them yet.

[She can’t stop herself from saying it.] You’re really different from any Tony that’s been here before.

A superhero team? [Tony raises an eyebrow in return. Like, a team other than Rhodey and Pepper?] Huh. Maybe Fury got his pet project running after all. I'm a little surprised he got me to join it, but... [he shrugs.] I guess my last team-up with SHIELD and Company worked out. I just wasn't really expecting that to be, like, a regular gig.

[In response to her observation, he simply nods sagely and asks, totally deadpan,] It's the beard, isn't it?

Superhero's hardly a regular gig. I know, Spider-Man told me.

[She doesn't know Fury, but then again, not all the Avengers were there. As far a she knows anyway.]

But yeah, it has to be the beard. [And nnnnothing to do with age, personality, not drinking, actually looking hopeful. She has a list in her head apparently.]

[Amazing what a difference a supportive, loving father and thirty less years of self-loathing makes, huh? ~~Still an obnoxious rich wiseass with way too many terrible one-liners, though.~~]

It's pretty regular in my universe. Do you know how hard it is to secretly fight crime and go to high school at the same time? Supervillains just don't know when to quit.

[They can be a part of the "My dad loves me and supports everything I do even though I'm a snarkastic ass!" club.]

Wait, you do the secret identity thing? [Genuine surprise.] I had to do school before I could do anything at all really. If you can call it school. [Eyeroll.]

[Tony smiles wryly.] Yeah, well, they weren't exactly going to let a sixteen-year-old with a heart condition fight supervillains. If Roberta ever found out, she'd definitely have grounded me for life.

So, I got stuck going to theater class instead of working in the lab actually doing something useful. [He makes a face.] It was such a drag.

[He's almost finished vivisecting the Enterprise at this point, and he's prodding curiously at the housing of the power source.]

Sounds like it. But those acting lessons might come in handy some day.

[Says the girl who usually can’t bluff when put under pressure.]

That is new though. Iron Man and Tony Stark have always been the same thing here. Going to be kind of hard to keep that a secret. Especially with the others that knew you. I’m sure you’ve heard from them by now.

[This is the first time Korra’s gotten to see the interior, and her side tails droop down as she peers inside; possibly getting in the way.]

[He could absolutely use acting lessons: he can't lie his way out of a paper bag. Not that he'd ever admit it.]

It's not a secret anymore. Not here, anyway. I figured out pretty quickly that too many people knew the other versions of me, [he agrees ruefully.] And, I mean, I showed up in the armor, so it would have been pretty hard to keep it a secret anyway. It's kind of nice, not having to hide it, actually. Makes my life a little easier. A secret identity is a pain in the ass.

[Tony barely even notices the infringing hair - he just instinctively turns the ship a little, scooting it out of harm's way. He's spent enough time in the lab with Pepper leaning over his shoulder and poking at things that such adjustments are second nature.

He's investigated the power core to his satisfaction now, and he looks up at Korra. ] This is what the other Tony had in his heart?!

[Korra peeks up at Tony, a smile on her face. She never thought much of secret identities being a thing on Tu Vishan, not when she had the exact opposite on her own world.]

Yup. Well, his was a little bigger than that one. But yeah, you could see it glowing under his shirt sometimes.

...You really don't have one?

[She peers down as if it suddenly going to glow now that she's there to see in person.]

[Tony shakes his head.] I did for a while, until Extremis repaired my heart. But mine was... Sort of a much, much simpler version of this. It ran off the some of the same fundamental tech as what I used to power my suits, but nowhere near as powerful. I don't know why you would put one of these in your chest - that's like putting a fusion reactor engine in a Hot Wheels car. Yeah, it'll run your heart - for about a thousand years. Jeez. Talk about overkill.

Be lucky you don't have to. Pair that with a beard and alcohol and I might end up with another drunken console conversation about tribble whispering.

[No, she's not joking. Not with that face.]

But the Tony that had the armor after Extremis? He didn't drink, and neither do you; so that's kind of a record.

Tony;

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