Of Neuromancy and Iron Wills 5 (Patreon)

…Power Reserves Increased…

…

…Bonding 54.54% Complete…

…

…Implanting Datafeed: Room-Scale…

The implanting of new knowledge barely came with a headache this time, one I was able to basically ignore and shuffle about the room I’d been provided to the kitchenette. A measuring cup was filled with water and stuck in the microwave as I mindlessly pulled a ziplock bag of rice, a stick of butter and a carton of eggs from the fridge. I put the skillet on the stove and got started on my breakfast while mentally reviewing what CFU had provided me with.

From a cursory review, it seemed that the new designs and principles were focused on stuff meant to take up the space of a closet at the smallest. What caught my interest immediately were the medical sterilization field and cyber-implantation suite. That put a sleepy smile on my face as I poured myself a cup of tea (lemon ginger, I think). With the blueprints in my head from this latest “download”, I’d be able to make a… huh, what the hel-eck should I even call it? Eh, Auto-Ripper would work. It was basically an Auto-Doc version of a Ripper-Doc anyway.

…Truely, Host Possesses Gift For Names…

Love ya too. Shaking my head, I scarfed down my breakfast before checking the messages I had on my new phone. Test the nanotube production today, Toni wanted to talk after, something I was more than willing to do. The nanotube production would take two hours to get ready, after that it was a matter of leaving it alone to work.

[hr][/hr]

A nuke couldn’t wipe the grin from my face as I took in the results of six hours of cooking time. What looked like a veritable forest of dark gray, somewhere between twenty nine and thirty inches tall. The chemical solution I’d made worked like a charm, another two hours and Star Industries will have a metric crapton of carbon nanotubes for a fraction of the overall cost anywhere else would need to make this much.

Dr. Williams looked like she was planning on getting absolutely smashed in celebration as soon as she clocked out, even asking me if I wanted to join her. From the look she was giving me, I had a feeling that drinks weren’t the only thing she had in mind. But, I’d already sent Toni a message agreeing to meet her, so drink invites to potential pussy would have to wait. Sorry little buddy.

Soon after, I was in the backseat of a car with my nanotube sample (I was visiting Toni anyway, so a portion for her to examine was being sent with me) being driven by the fluffy Happy Hogan, who indeed looked like Jon Favreau. The man had given me a nod, not friendly but not hostile either, before we took off. I was looking forward to the day I could afford to buy a place outside the city, the LA smog was terrible, hell it was visible even from street level as Hogan drove me from the Stark Industries building to Toni’s place on the coast.

Hogan and I entered Toni’s place, only for the smooth dulcet tones of Paul Bettany to come over the speakers, “Welcome, Mr. Hogan, Mr. Gibson.”

“JARVIS,” Hogan greeted. “Got the new guy like Toni asked.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hogan. Miss Stark is expecting Mr. Gibson in the garage.”

Hogan gave me directions before leaving, leaving a warning that if I tried anything JARVIS would do worse to me than anything he could do. Had I been planning anything untoward, I’d have had ample opportunity to do so while we were in Afghanistan, something I think was the reason he was willing to leave me alone with Toni, even taking JARVIS into account.

Setting those thoughts aside, I followed the directions and found myself in the glorious basement garage/lab that was the hallmark of nerd dream homes for years. My gaze took in the super tech, the holographic interfaces, and the shortstack brunette hunched over a table with a pair of goggles on as she soldered something.

I waited for her to set aside the soldering gun before I spoke up, “Hey Toni, got a little something for ya.”

She turned around, looked at the gray bundle wrapped in brown paper in my hand, met my gaze, and quipped, “I thought guys were supposed to bring ladies flowers.”

“You seemed like the type of girl who’d like something practical more than pretty,” I continued her joke as I set the bundle of carbon nanotubes down on one of the work tables. “A sampling of the first batch of carbon nanotubes, for your inspection. I can only imagine how effective they’d be in a certain miniaturized reactor.”

Toni stared at the bundle wide eyed, a hint of drool starting to form at the corner of her mouth before she hurriedly wiped it away. Chuckling in amusement, I made an offer, “I think I can build something to get the rest of the metal out of you.”

Her gaze snapped to my face, and I pushed on, “I was thinking about it last night, and I’m pretty sure I can make a medical sterile field generator, along with a focused metal detector and magnet to make sure that none of the shards are missed. I realize that the current reactor works, but the thought of something happening and the reactor either failing or being ruined or taken and you dying from the shards when I know I can do something about it…”

Toni’s fingers pressed against my lips, stopping the rambling word salad that had been spewing from my mouth. Her eyes stared into mine, a coy smile with a hint of suppressed nervousness on her face as she said, “I’ll think about it. In the meantime, there’s something I’d like your thoughts on.”

Toni led me over to the holo-table, pulling up a folder filled with blueprints for what could only be a Toni-sized Iron Man (Iron Woman? Iron Maiden?) armor. My eyes danced over the designs, noting the hydraulic systems, the software parameters, the microrockets, the way everything connects to the reactor in her chest…

“Beautiful,” I murmur.

Toni’s work was… elegant, the way the suit would handle… just everything. Everything I’d designed thus far had been simple and straightforward, despite its advanced nature. The focus being on getting the most result for the least amount of material. At the time I hadn’t noticed the difference because Toni was just as limited as I was, and had taken that into account for her designs. But now that she had access to greater resources, it was like poetry in engineering.

“It’s something for me to work on while I’m recovering, and once I have, I plan on finding out just how those bastards got their hands on my tech,” Toni said, a growl in her voice towards the end.

“If you don’t mind my input,” I said as I looked over the designs. “Maybe reroute the power to the flight stabilizers through this part of the arm, it’ll make it less likely for a stray bullet or particulate to interfere with your flight capabilities.”

Toni looked at where I was pointing, and made a few adjustments to the holo-display. She looked over the readout with a hum, “That’ll reduce potential output by about two and a half percent.”

“Sure, but if you’re in a situation where that amount matters, you should be getting out of there. Plus, shifting the conduits there allows…”

We ended up talking shop for a very long time. To the point that Toni and I lost track of time, and weren’t snapped out of it until my new phone rang. With a call from Dr. Williams, wanting to know where the hell I was, and that just because the carbon nanotubes worked didn’t mean I could skip a day without so much as a ‘by your leave’.

Oops.

[hr][/hr]

Over the next week, I all but moved into Toni’s place, helping her with the design of her Mark II armor whenever I wasn’t at my job at Stark Industries. I think I hadn’t gone back to the place I’d been given to stay at since the second day, thankfully Toni smoothed over any ruffled feathers, since almost everyone at Stark Industries seemed to have a soft spot for Toni. I could see why, she was bursting with energy, passion, and that was on top of the fact that she was fucking brilliant.

I was afraid of being surrounded by countless Honorary Big Brother figures ready to warn me about the shovels they had if I mistreated Toni, but instead they seemed to have sympathy for me. The answer I’d gotten was how Toni had a tendency to pick people as “projects”, people who were almost immediately burnt out from interacting with her on a daily basis.

As one of the Stark eggheads (didn’t get his first name, last name was Riva) told me, “Toni’s wonderful. But best taken in small doses.”

Personally, I didn’t see it. Toni was delightful, and the way her mind made connections and inferences between seemingly unrelated principles and reactions was honestly really hot. Plus the way she would stick her tongue out when she was focused on some new design or idea made her look… just adorable.

The looks I was getting by the end of week two told me I had surpassed the normal Toni burn out point. But in all honesty, Toni and I were just getting started. The interior systems for the boots had been fabricated, but most importantly, I’d convinced Toni to have the last of the shrapnel removed.

It took pulling a dirty trick, but the Disappointed Father #2 gaze from Yinsen got her to agree. Yinsen insisted on being part of the operation, something which I heartily agreed with, and within four days, I had all the medical doohickies needed for the operation completed. So we agreed that on that Friday, the fifteenth of May, we’d go through with the operation.

Let there be no doubt, Yinsen may not have the engineering capabilities that Toni and I did, but he was on a similar relative level as a surgeon. In retrospect, he had to be, to do what he did for Toni when she was brought to him. In a dark, dirty cave without anything approaching a proper medical toolkit, he managed to remove over ninety percent of the shrapnel that had been embedded in her, then close her back up without even a hint of infection.

The surgery was nerve wracking for me, in large part because I’d already done basically everything I could. I thought of Toni as a friend (and I didn’t make friends easily), and she was lying there unconscious with her chest cut open. All I could do was follow Yinsen’s instructions, handing him the tools he asked for as he smoothly and methodically removed bits of razor sharp metal from beneath Toni’s ribcage.

Finally, after four hours, Yinsen pulled the last sliver of metal from her chest and began the process of closing her up. Most notably compared to before, the cylinder that had held the ARC reactor didn’t go back in her. Instead, there was a ceramic polymer weave I’d cooked up that would bind to her ribcage and cover up the hole there had been in it.

“Well?” I asked as Yinsen took his gloves off.

“It went better than I could have hoped for,” he said as we tucked the still sleeping Toni into bed. “She’ll have a scar where the magnet was, but it is far better than the alternative.”

I let out a sigh of relief, tension bleeding from my body as I slumped into a chair, “Thanks, Yinsen.”

He waved me off, “I was more than glad to do it. I admit, I was afraid she’d wait until something traumatic happened to get the rest of the metal removed.”

I thought back to the events of the third Iron Man movie, the memories fuzzy. Not surprising, I’d only watched it once a good seven or eight years ago. But I do remember Tony only getting the last of the sharpen removed after it. Shaking my head to banish the thoughts, I stood and shook hands with Yinsen.

“It’s late, and Toni’s got some extra rooms. Why don’t you sleep here tonight?” I asked. “She’ll definitely want to talk to you when she wakes up.”

It didn’t take much convincing. It was late, and Yinsen was tired. I went to the room that had basically been given to me, and got some sleep myself.