ᛏᛟᚾᛁ ᛋᛏᚨᚱᚲ (iron) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-07-16 12:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | bruce banner (mcu), tony stark / iron man (mcu) |
Who: Tony Stark and Bruce Banner
When: Thursday, July 16th 2015
Where: Their lab, Stark Industries
What: Absolutely not building Ultron.
Rating: PG-13.
If he'd heard it once, he'd heard it a thousand times: No one can ever be ahead of the game, Tony, and trying to do that usually ends badly for everyone. All we can do is be prepared to take on whatever else comes our way, and hopefully do it without compromising who we are or why we're doing this. Every time we win one battle, it's that much closer to winning the entire war But no matter how many times Steve said it, no matter how many different ways he dressed up his ideals and his moral stance, it didn't make Rogers any less wrong than the first time he said it. Tony got it he understood, Steve was a vehicle of war, a cog in a machine which he didn't build. Of course he thought winning battles made a difference. He probably thought doing the right thing for the right reasons actually meant something, too. But Stark knew better; and he knew that relying on a sword of truth and a shield of justice was a path to a lot of dead soldiers. Stark didn't think less of Steve for believing as he did, in fact he admired it -- he wished he could live in a world where he really believed the efforts and sacrifices of a single person mattered and every battle won was a step closer to their goal. Really, he would give up just about anything if it would make Steve's view of the world the right one. But the cosmic scales didn't balance that way. Survival wasn't just, and it wasn't fair. It just was. And fuck, most battles weren't even fought about survival, they were fought for power and the money that came with it. Personally, Tony thought HYDRA's 'World Domination' game plan was a bit too old hat -- he didn't buy it. The world wasn't ruled by empires anymore, and while he expected it coming from someone like Loki, who like the rest of the Asgardians, was a bit out of touch -- HYDRA seemed too calculating and sinisterly smart to think they could eventually fly a giant octopus flag at the top of the world. This wasn't a game of Risk; these days actual world domination took on a very different form. Like having your name on products that reached every corner of the globe. Not that Tony would know anything about that. But as difficult to stamp out as HYDRA was, and as much of a threat as they proved to be -- Tony had been throwing his efforts into AI and the Iron Legion because when the Celestials had shown up, his only solution had been to set off a bomb that would throw half the planet into a nuclear winter, which shockingly enough had made Steve Rogers spill his tea. The Legion that he'd deployed in Sokovia wasn't good enough. They were drones, but if he wasn't monitoring them, their autopilot wasn't responsive and it wasn't helpful. But thus far, his attempts to adjust JARVIS's AI and create something that was independent and invincible hadn't proven to be much more use. His folly, probably, was the fact that he wasn't really trying to build a weapon, or a suit of armor -- but the Next Avenger. Something that could think critically, process information and respond with out delay, and with the unwavering morals and strong sense of what it wanted to accomplish that Steve had underlined as such an important aspect of who they were and what they stood for. But the more Stark worked on it, the less he seemed able to pull the right strings, or bring things together the way he wanted to. It wasn't good enough. Failing wasn't acceptable. He needed to do more. And that's when he found something that might be able to help. In the room where he'd uncovered Loki's sceptre, he'd found something else -- a pile of scrap metal on a table with glowing blue eyes and a metal body in pieces tossed around it. Some digging into the files he'd lifted from the HYDRA computers revealed what it was: exactly what he was looking for. Dedicated AI algorithms, and possible the missing piece in the work that he'd been slaving over since the Celestials had first shown up. From the looks of the HYDRA reports, they hadn't managed to make their AI function properly themselves, but they weren't him. And he really wasn't opposed to finishing what someone else started if it got him where he wanted to go. *** "Hey Bruce?" Stark said, as the other Avenger meandered into their lab. Yesterday had been busy, and that allowed them both the luxury of a late start in the office today, even if they had a lot they needed to go through. "Set your coffee down somewhere, will you? I need to show you something." |