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[arcreact]

// outbox;
→ 10/27; tali'zorah
→ 10/21; marian hawke
→ 09/21; adrien arbuckal
→ 09/21; nathan drake
→ 08/15; marian hawke
→ 08/01; bruce banner
→ 07/11; elena fisher
→ 07/07; trish walker
→ 06/21; adrien arbuckal
→ 06/20; bruce banner
→ 06/20; bucky barnes
→ 06/19; elena fisher
→ 06/15; steve rogers
→ 06/08; bruce banner

text | video | audio

You know what to do.

Comments

[bombsheltered]

So, eccentric, right?

[ milly's mouth tugs into a grin and her eyebrows creep a little higher. she's not impressed yet, tony, although she can tell definitely he's not your average tinkerer. her hands go to her hips, head tilted. ]

Yeah! I mean, I'm in the West Coast Trailblazers program now, but I was totally doing stuff before. So about...two years now?

[arcreact]

How'd you guess? I'd like to think I hide it very well.

[ Tony gives her a challenging look in return, but it mostly seems to be amusement. At the end of the day, he's got a weakness for young people with big ideals, and this kid seems like the type. ]

And that's, what, a superhero team? You guys all live in a tower, respond to the Trailblazers symbol, go kick supervillain butt?

[ It all might've sounded mocking from someone else but from Tony, somehow... it doesn't. ]

[bombsheltered]

[ she's half-expecting sarcasm, but she's pleasantly surprised. ]

Oh, no, that's Alpha Force. We don't have a tower, just dorms. [ not that she lives there. and then she realizes how lame she just made that sound. ] It's -- a training program. Or -- more like apprentices! Yeah, that sounds a lot better. But I did a good year or two as a vigilante before that.

[ her resume is pretty colorful for a superhero who's only been active a couple of years. ]

[arcreact]

I can respect some well-meaning vigilantism.

[ It would be pretty hypocritical otherwise, all things considered. ]

Though, personally, I wouldn't wanna maintain extensive cybernetics if I were fighting off cartoonish villains on the regular. Sounds exhausting.

[bombsheltered]

[ milly can't help but beam. vigilanteism isn't strictly condoned, but CONDOR tends to look the other way unless something really disastrous happens. she might be in the training program, but it's not for lack of experience. ]

I mean, they'd need maintenance whether I was superheroing or not. [ buuuuut...it definitely ramps up the frequency of dents and dings and necessary repairs. ] But my dad does most of the work, and he's never been a big fan of my caped career, but he doesn't ever complain about the work. He says it's good research.

[ she keeps her voice bright, but a frown flickers momentarily on her face. her dad is kind of weird about it sometimes. ]

[arcreact]

[ So, potentially mad scientist dad experimenting on his kid? He's putting it down as "probably". ]

Yeah, well, hopefully there won't be much here that requires more than the occasional tune-up. Think of it as a vacation?

[ He says, a scarce week or two before everything goes to shit. Whatever.

He makes a vague gesture towards her arm. ]

It would be pointless to pretend I'm not curious.

[bombsheltered]

[ milly looks down at her arm, curling her fingers -- fingers that look totally normal, unless you're looking very, very hard. she presses her lips together, not quite frowning. ]

It's like I said. I was in an accent when I was a little kid. I was seven. My father's a cyberneticist. Kind of a big one. [ the "net worth in more digits than a phone number" kind of big. ] He's head of Mintaka Industries...not that the name would mean anything to you.

[ she flexes her fingers again. ]

There were these robotic aliens in LA -- Cybertronians. There're a bunch of them on the ship, you'd have to be blind to miss them. Anyway, they transform, just like my hand. My dad worked with some of them and got a bunch of new research data out of it, so...voila. Transforming gun hand. Oh, and he overhauled my whole fuel system based on their physiology. Bye-bye power cells, hello energon. Pretty neat, huh?

[ it would have been neater if he told her he was going to do any of this before he did it. ]

[arcreact]

You'd be surprised. Anything that's "name followed by 'Industries'" is pretty illuminating.

[ Tony eyes her hand with interest as she flexes it, watching how it moves. It really is shockingly seamless, the way it can blend with human flesh. You wouldn't know. ]

But you just told me more about our giant robot pals in two sentences than I've gotten from several conversations with them. Can't say I actually know what energon is, though, unless it's just some silly alternate universe name for something I'm already familiar with.

If you tell me it's rocket fuel or something, I'm gonna be so disappointed.

[bombsheltered]

[ oh. well, that surprises milly a little. but then again, maybe the cybertronians tony was talking to were a little closed-mouthed. ]

Well, kind of, except not. It's a special kind of fuel. More like food for them than fuel, really. Or...more like a meal shake, I guess. It's got way more of a kick than rocket fuel. I can run on less than a liter for days -- weeks, if I'm really conservative about it, but if I use my blaster it tends to deplete faster. But I've only ever had synthesized energon. I bet the real thing is even better.

[arcreact]

Riddle me this, then: where're you getting the stuff from, or aren't you? Because I'm pretty sure we'd be using it down here in engineering if we had easy access to it.

[ AND HE HIGH-KEY WANTS TO GET HIS HANDS ON SOME, MAYBE. Sign him the fuck up. ]

And if you're not, what happens when you run dry?

[bombsheltered]

Well, my metabolic system will start to compensate once my fuel levels go down past a certain point. But it only works for a little while. I tend to get, um...kind of sluggish.

[ she waves a hand. ]

Anyway, I've never had any real fuel emergencies. The Cybertronians here have energon, but it's not exactly a surplus item here. Ratchet keeps some in our room so I can get to it more easily. But with all the Cybertronians on the ship, I don't think there's enough to be using it to power the engines.

[arcreact]

Yikes, talk about dashed hopes. Let a guy dream.

[ Tony doesn't actually seem all that choked up about the lack of energon supplies for him to play with, all things considered. (There's always the mail drop, after all.)

He tips his head toward the engines looming on the other side of the expansive engineering room. ]

It's just as well, because I don't think you'd wanna be chugging anything we put in those, anyway.