trans_9 | What does this do...?

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What does this do...?

Tim glanced around the Special Weapons Division. It was... basically a disaster. The equipment was broken, and the--fairly horrifying-looking--medical equipment looked like someone very determined had decided to demolish it. They'd done a thorough job of it, too. With a slight shrug, he stepped into the wing and started poking through the broken equipment. There had to be something interesting left in here...

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Alright, so Tony hadn't been feeling too terribly social after being hijacked by a bunch of bugs. Another round of people had been released into this sweaty armpit of a ship, and he hadn't bothered to meet any of them.

Still, he couldn't sleep forever. By now his eyes kind of hurt from trying. It was time to try, again, to find something he could get into and start working on. Boredom set in quickly for Stark, and it generally proved to be the source of many Bad Ideas.

Tim would get a few minutes of quiet before hearing a loud BANG and Tony spitting out words that didn't sound like polite conversation.

"Shit!" Ten seconds in and he'd already about busted his own shin on broken equipment.

Tim turned to face the--not necessarily welcome--newcomer. Ah. tony Stark. Fellow bug-captive. Not a bad guy, even if he hadn't been in a great mood. Well--none of them had.

"Careful, Mr. Stark," he said mildly. "There's a lot of stuff in here, and none of it's organized."

"My name's Tony. Feel free to use it." The older captive's expression turned sour. "We could make a trade. I can be Mr. Stark, if you can be Captain Obvious."

Dark eyes rapidly raked the room, categorizing piles of junk into 'useless' or 'mostly useless.'

"What a dump." Suddenly his voice was downright cheerful. "It has potential. I think this is the first real technology I've seen in this place. Well, outside of the med lab itself, but we need that. Erm, or the media room. We need that, too."

Organization? Tony could barely keep his thoughts straight, but when it came to improvising, he was the right man in the right place.

Tim snorted. "Captain Obvious doesn't really work for me. But--all right. Tony it is. You can call me Tim, if we're going the informal route."

He glanced around the room. "Yeah--I noticed it when everyone was in for their medical appointments after the bug situation. Specialized Weapons Division?" He grinned a little. "How could I resist?"

"So it's not Robin?" Tony just hadn't been sure which title was which. "Some superhero shtick?" It seemed like a decent portion of them were in this particular line of work. "Tim, then. Nice and simple."

"I was too busy having a headache during all that." The very thought of it made Tony rub the back of his neck. "Good find, though. I've been looking for something like this."

The kid grinned, and Tony found himself mirroring the expression. "Hell, specialized weapons are sort of my thing. As in, I got paid for it."

Maybe he could even start cobbling together another suit.. Well. He'd dream about it, at least.

"Thank you--I like it. I've become attached to it over the years. And we're going informal, remember?" Tim added, smiling. "Robin's my work name, so--you can just go with Tim for now."

He made a face at Tony's mention of the trip to the medical bay. "Yeah, none of us were in fantastic shape for that. But--silver linings." He waved his hand to indicate the area.

"So--what kind of work did you do with specialized weapons? And does it have anything to do with your glowing heart battery?" Tim definitely hadn't forgotten that--it had been one of the more interesting parts of the bug capture experience. He'd never seen anything like it before.

"Ah-ha." That was clear to him, now. A work name. It'd be pretty damned awkward to demand everyone call him Iron Man.. as cool as that was. "That sounds like a plan."

"I'd say more of an aluminum lining." A blink, then. "But there's got to be something useful in this mess."

Heart battery? Tony winced. Unfortunately, the kid had a good memory. "It's a long story. To keep it short, I sort of made a lot of things that blow up, and then I told them to the American government." The grin was gone now. Tony still felt guilt over the whole. So blind. So stupid. "Then I got hit by one of my own frag grenades, and it's funny how fast you realize that making shrapnel that can't be removed safely is a really bastardly thing to do." Hindsight was 20/20, not to mention ugly in it's clarity.

"So, uh, my heart battery keeps things ticking and there's a nice magnet in there that keeps the shrapnel from making mincemeat out of my heart. I've become rather fond of that organ, you know." Now he was smiling a lopsided, self-derogatory sort of fashion. "I go into cardiac arrest without it."

"So, I'm a cyborg or something now. I dunno." Now he was just poking idly at some random piece of trash and eyeing the wires coming out of it. "So how's your day been?" Change of topic, stat!

Tim hummed thoughtfully. "That sounds really interesting," he admitted. He was always curious about the different kinds of tech he encountered. "Though--you're right about the shrapnel thing being a really nasty idea."

He prodded at some of the demolished technology on the bench in front of him. Oh, that looked interesting... He surreptitiously tucked it into the evidence pouch in his belt.

He glanced up at Tony's question. "My day? Oh--not bad." He shrugged a little and grinned. "Found this place. Had the chance to talk to someone interesting. I'd say it's looking better and better."

"Well, you know, you put it into a certain perspective, and you can talk yourself into doing just about anything. If weapons were only used on bad guys, and kept good guys alive.." Tony's face scrunched into a grimace. "Things are never quite that simple, though."

"Hm. I wonder what they were actually working on in here. Blah blah, classified, I'm sure.. " Screw Stacy's old crew and their ideas, really, if something in here could be used for his own agenda.

"Never really works that way," Tim agreed. "And things are never black and white, even in my line of work."

He glanced around the room at Tony's speculation. "I'm guessing something involving experimentation on live subjects." He absently fingered one of the broken straps that remained on a table. "Probably nothing either of us would have enjoyed being a part of."

"Yeah. Unfortunate, isn't it? I kind of like it when things aren't complicated." Tony was laughing to himself, by then. No doubt he liked a challenge, but only when it was under his terms!

"Ugh. I hope nothing's left in here. It'd be pretty bad to release the plague onto the rest of the ship.. though I guess our be-tentacled babysitter would have locked us out." Tony scowled at the table. "Maybe her last staff offed themselves. Gruesome." His imagination would run away with him some day.

"I never did care for bio-weapon research. Too freakin' messy."

Tim fingered one of the broken straps on the table in front of him. "Or whatever they were working on offed them. This doesn't look like it was the friendliest of facilities."

He gave a wry smile at Tony's mention of bio-weapons. He nodded in agreement. "Biological warfare hurts too many innocents--at least, in my experience. I've never been involved in the research aspect--just the consequences."

"Well, putting straps on a gurney means that someone wanted to escape in the first place. I just hope it's been sterilized. It doesn't look like Stacy's as meticulous about the details as I first imagined, if giant cockroaches got in." In other words, Tony sure as hell wasn't going to touch that table!

"Well, you know, that's the difference with machines. You can at least predict what's going to happen, because you programmed it to be that way. They don't surprise you, because they can't go outside of the design. Manipulating life, on the other hand.. too many chances for things to go wrong."

A shiver ran down the back of his spine, then, a cold sensation.

"Enough to give you the heebie jeebies, huh?"

Tim nodded in agreement. "All in all--probably not a place I'd like to spend a lot of time," he said with a wry smile. "But--it's still interesting. I just hope we don't find anything... left over in here, you know?" After the giant bug thing--the last thing he really wanted was to pick another fight with something else that had mutated in this place.

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What does this do...?

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