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mrtonystark (mrtonystark) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-10-03 21:59:00

Who: Tony Stark and Seymour Birkhoff
When: August
Where: Tony’s Lab
What: Birkhoff needs… something. For something “kinda illegal”?
Ratings/Warning: Low/None
Status: Complete when posted


Tony finished up what he was working on, and then wrapped things up. Cleaning the lab was cathartic and calming for Tony Stark, actually, though one might not assume so by the way he worked. Tony normally made a mess, throwing things around, disregarding where things land. The zen came in after the creative work, when he had to put everything back in its place.

So Tony was cleaning when the door chime let him know that his assistant admitted Birkhoff into the lab.

It had gotten to the point in his dreams that Birkhoff wasn’t able to actually maintain any kind of calm he had in relation to Division and the potential that there was a form of it here, in this world. And while his own systems were damn good, he didn’t exactly boast the same power levels as a Stark quality server.

So he’d bundled up his stuff and got back over to Stark’s building, being directed through and up to Tony’s lab by an assistant while reminding himself that he was here for a completely different purpose, and poking his nose into Stark’s systems was a rude way to say thanks for letting him get his hack on with Stark’s oomph.

“Birkhoff! My man. How’s it going?” Tony called out from the other side of the lab. He was making sure his drill bits were all cleaned and put away properly. Finally he glanced up from his position at the tool shelf and glanced over. “I hear we’ve got a project on our hands?”

“Sure, you can call it that.” Tony’s personality was still something Birkhoff was trying to get used, the exuberance and almost childish enthusiasm. But really, he supposed Stark had a reason to find fun in just about anything ever. “I mean, a systematic search through every Government system I can get into just to find out if there’s a black op kill squad somewhere… Sure, it’s a project.”

Fundamentally, it was unlikely that there would be much to find. But Birkhoff knew how to track these things, knew what to look for in operations and syphoned cash and bought politicians. Mostly because he was the one who covered that shit up in the Dreams.

Tony raised both eyebrows. It certainly did sound like a… well, if not a project then a massive endeavor. It was going to take some time, and a lot of juice. So Tony motioned to a spot in the lab where there was an empty desk set up in the corner. “Does this work for your set up? What else can I get you?” Tony had basically everything that Birkhoff could want or need to start his search.

“Yeah man, that works great.” The beauty of a set up like Stark’s system was that he had way more access than, say, hacking a remote Russian server to access a satellite to intercept a signal, to piggy back into a secure system somewhere in the Government route to slip in a back door. It also meant, should someone notice something, it wouldn’t be linked to a Russian anything. Because while Birkhoff had a nasty habit of poking into Russian anything, he didn’t actually want to accidentally start a war.

He’d do that on purpose one day probably.

“...but actually…” There were a few things that Birkhoff could probably use, if Stark had them, rattling them off to see if Mr Billionaire Genius was seriously willing to just lend Birkhoff to tools to almost (sort of) commit an act of treason (in a roundabout way, he was actually protecting the country, okay). But with this set up, and those things, there was no possible chance of actually getting caught, so did it really matter?

Yeah, there was already a lot of hostility toward Russia, considering the giant doofus in the White House. Tony Stark would prefer to not have any ties there, either. Whatever Birkhoff wanted, though, Tony would support. That’s what the Dreamers all did, right? If it was Joe Schmo off the street, the answer would have been completely different.

Mr. Billionaire Genius was already forming his own mental list of all the things that Birkhoff might have needed, but when the younger man started rattling things off, he made better plans as to how to provide. He started asking Jarvis to help organize things, too. It was nice to have pretty much unlimited everything at his fingertips.

“Can I get you a scotch while I’m at it?” Tony asked. He was already moving to the dry bar to pour a couple drinks.

Actually getting what he needed meant that Birkhoff could delve straight into the dark web, his own system sheltering him from detection by most other systems. “Um,” usually he was on energy drinks like water, but right then, almost treason needed something stronger. “You know what, yeah. That’d work.”

It took just a few minutes before he got ShadowNet into the CIA’s system, punching in the most recent of missions and assignments from Division that he could think of to get to the files they attached to. Then it was just a case of breaking the encryption on it all.

Tony poured them each a drink, then delivered Birkhoff’s without glancing over his shoulder at the screen. He didn’t want to make the younger man feel (even more) paranoid, so he moved back to a different part of the lab to start going through some blueprints. He figured that Birkhoff would call for him if he was needed.

It was unusual to get to work without someone hovering over him -at least when it was this kind of work. A lot of the time he did work alone on projects here, but with Division it was either Michael, Percy or Amanda stalking at his shoulder to see what he was doing. And after that it was Nikita, Ryan or Mikey. Safe to say when he got to work without the audience, things happened quicker.

Like finding a paper trail of shell companies, connected to other shell organisations and filtered through Government groups and then into the black nothingness. “Um…” This was probably bad. Very very bad. Punching in some of the names from Overwatch that he knew didn’t get him anything, so there was a chance that there was no Senator Pierce here that had this kind of juice.

“What do you do if your worst fears are realised in a very sobering way?”

Tony heard the younger man speaking from across the lab. He’d been redesigning a microchip in 3-D when his thoughts were distracted--pulled out of his work by Birkhoff’s question. He set aside his glasses and wandered back over.

“That all depends,” Tony mused aloud, now more curious than anything. Well, that and a little concerned for his friend. “How dangerous are these worst fears? Are we talking apocalypse-level fears? Are we talking jail-time fears?”

“Not… quite. More like ‘covert group pulling strings and screwing over innocent people’ worst fears. Although Amanda and Percy… they’re apocalypse level baddies.” If they were the ones pulling those strings. He really hoped not.

“Say, you’re a political hopeful, but you don’t have much in the way of morals, just power hungry ambition. You hire a Government Agency with those same morals to clear the way for you to reach the highest you can, be it by killing your opponent or just blackmailing them with something horrible that the agency just concocted.” He half wondered how some of those politicians were coping with that guilt in the dream life. “Or some military fuck up needs brushing aside, hell, some military fuck up needs to happen, we did that once or twice too.”

It was an intricate systems of dark deeds and lives ruined, and for the longest time the illusion of working for the Government and doing something worthwhile had been enough to pretend that wasn’t exactly what it was.