capeandcowllogs | You Better Find Someone to Blame;

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You Better Find Someone to Blame;

WHO: [Bad username or site: his_mothers_son title=John_Connor @ livejournal.com] and [Bad username or site: iron_liver title=Tony_Stark @ livejournal.com]
WHERE: Stark Tech building, under a desk
WHEN: September 19th, 2009
WARNINGS: None (we can all hope)
SUMMARY: John has some really shitty ideas sometimes. Like breaking into Stark Tech.
FORMAT: Paragraph.

This is likely a terrible idea, but then without his mother around, John Connor isn't always a bastion of brilliant ideas. This ranks only slightly below following a shipment of coltan carried by a terminator whose override is to kill John Connor, but only slightly. He's currently curled up under a desk, his communicator downloading schematics for the suit, that suit that John is convinced might help him, if it doesn't kill him first.

He processes the binary, and maybe that's what distracts him. It's new for him to see binary and understand it, not read it like letters or a book but to see it and understand it, immediately, the words and ideas and codes in his head. It's only a mild perk of being here, in the place, though.

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[ Suit Accessed ]

The reading popped into his head, instantly, not intended to be a warning, but a confirmation. That shouldn't happen, at least in Stark's experience, and he eyed the panel his suit sat behind in his office warily. Nobody should be able to get into his suit, except for him.

He stood from his desk, before mentally tracing the signal, bouncing it from one location to the other. The radius of influence narrowed. United States. The City. StarkTech. Someone inside his building? At least he didn't have to hunt down the person outside of his building, and that made it much easier to pinpoint the location and quickly move, down to the right floor, and then into the room. He stood on the other side of the door, before pulling the connection, ripping it from the suit, and directly into his brain, reversing the flow of requests, instead transmitting signals directly to the hacker.

[ Sneaky, aren't you?_ ]

John froze. He hadn't actually anticipated success - after all, had to actually get in the building before he could even get his comm to interface, which was probably where this entire plan had gone downhill fast. He scowled, and curled up tighter. What would Sarah do?

She wouldn't get in this situation in the first place John berated himself, then quickly looked around. Any escape plans were dashed - his way in had been through the door. He scurried from under the desk, looking for some way, any way out of this mess.

He stared at his comm for another second. "Cut the interface," he hissed, trying to will it, but he couldn't do it. Either fear, or maybe more advanced technology, one or the other or something else entirely kept the words blinking on the screen.

Tony was more than annoyed, although the fact that the person on the other end couldn't force the comm to simply shut off said more than enough about their skills. They may be good, but they weren't as good as him, in the long run.

He stepped through the door, before closing it behind him, mentally interfacing with the locks for a quick moment to close them off, before stepping further. There would be no way out without his say so. Fitting.

His eyes flashed for a moment, streaks of color crossing his iris before shutting off again as he interfaced with the comm once more.

[ You might as well stand up, hiding isn't going to do you any good in this situation. ]

He didn't bother talking, not until he knew who it was on the other end of the transmission, and asking was better than just pulling up his databanks and cross-refrencing the comm number with the appropriate person.

John pressed himself against the wall. Every last remnant of instinct told him not to, that if he did, he would die. He stared at his comm and mentally called it a traitor, to which it responded by pulling up the binary codes for pong.

Terrific.

He debated, for a moment, sending his location to GLaDOS, hoping that maybe she would find him and help him. Her capabilities were way beyond his own, but then John didn't want her to know about this escapade, either.

[ What would do good? ] He finally managed to send that out, in binary, knowing that even if whoever it was (Tony Stark, probably) didn't understand it like he did, they probably had an interface that would translate.

John didn't, and couldn't possibly know, that Tony more than understood Binary. He thought in it, lived it, his brain worked in code now more than any person could understand. That was because he was a computer, in some ways. A machine and man in one, but better.

He loved the Extremis.

[ Coming on out. You can't get out, and I can guarantee I'm much faster than you are. ]

He didn't want to have to hurt the guy, but breaking and entering was a pretty serious offense, especially when they were trying to screw with his suit. He was paranoid enough about that, someone had already stolen one of his suits. It was a sore spot.

Besides, what did this person even want with his suit? He knew it was impressive machinery, of course it was. It was his. That didn't mean that many were so bold as to just bust in and try and take the information. Most people would know better.

John took another long minute, and finally his comm managed to disconnect; at least he had that moment of silence. Finally he got up. He could hear his own sense of self-preservation yelling at him and it sounded remarkably like his mom. Johh stared, for a minute.

He didn't know what to say. Breaking and entering was something that he did, something that was a part of him from the time he was a child. Asking for permission didn't come easily, not when permissions could be faked. It was easier to get what he wanted and hope that nobody noticed.

But in this situation he came out on the wrong end of things. He pocketed his comm, but didn't hold out his hands, just stared at the man in front of him.

Tony's eyes widened slightly, and he took in the kid's appearance with some appreciation. To be so young and actually get in to his systems was impressive enough, but the fact that he had gotten in? That was even more impressive.

"So, do you mind telling me what exactly you were hoping to accomplish?" he asked, leaning against a desk by one arm, looking at the kid with a slightly sardonic smirk.

He was a bit curious as to why. Did this kid really think he could have hacked his way into his building? His suit? Really?

John tilted his head a little. It was his gut instinct to keep his mouth shut, but only because it was a trait he had picked up from his mother. Don't answer questions, don't talk. Run. Run for your life.

He didn't even have a gun.

He looked around, and computers seemed to bloom to life - not all of them, but some, turning on, and then off. John still wasn't in complete control of his own powers, in terms of extent or confidence with them, but the question there was clear; I don't know what I'm doing. But the words that he managed weren't the ones in his head.

"A lot," he finally said, quietly, his voice terse. It seemed like he needed to give some kind of explanation. Anything at all.

Derek would murder him.

Watching the computers made Tony remember to thank his own brain for remembering to prepare against contingencies like this. He'd hate for someone to try and shut him down, or at least the parts of him that were relevant.

"Obviously that didn't pan out. You don't have much control, do you?" he questioned, sidetracking the kid a bit. He looked scared, like a deer in the headlights. His eyes weren't quite wide enough, but the nervous position of his body said enough. The tightness of his jaw, the tilt of his head, his spine, his stance.

The computers that John had managed to turn on immediately flickered, before the screens filtered through several images, before settling on one of his own suit.

"Not much control at all. What's your interest in my suit?"

"This," John paused, and he crossed his arms over his chest, and spread his stance a little, "...this doesn't happen."

In my world, are the words he doesn't say. That much should be obvious. He felt his own comm go off, like a needle in the brain. He didn't have control and it annoyed him, but he was looking for something, anything, that might help him explain this, or maybe something that would help him understand AI's better, something to take home with him.

If he ever went home.

"I've never seen anything like it."

He was scared and he was annoyed he had gotten caught, and he was still looking for a way out, but nothing seemed to be appearing.

"Few have," he mentioned, and the computers flickered down to sleep mode, before he turned towards the kid. "Your powers are new, of course you don't understand them. You aren't alone," he explained.

"What I want to know is why you thought that it would be a good idea to break into a Technology company to hack, when you knew your powers were still breaking in?"

It was a sore spot for Tony. Young, inexperienced heroes with no idea what they were doing had caused the SHRA, and he had been forced to set up the 50-States Initiative because of it. That was his responsibility now, even if he hated being shouldered with the responsibility. He had never been the kind of person to handle kids, and so he had shouldered as much of the responsibility as he could off to others, not that it did much good for him. He hated that he had done it, but it was, as always necessary. Always necessity over what he wanted to do. If he didn't do it, who would?

Nobody, of course.

John's jaw set, harsh, stubborn. Anyone looking at that face would see that this wasn't about being an idiot, or proving himself. John isn't used to having people question his abilities - his mother may not like him to do much of anything, but she never talked to him like he didn't know what he was doing. John had known all his life what he was doing.

"The information's here," he said. He paused. "If you hadn't been what you are you wouldn't have noticed until I was gone."

The words what you are came out of John's mouth before he could register them. Meta. Not human. That was John's first mistake. A lot of people in the City weren't, but John should have known that Tony Stark would be. The assumption came because in John's own skewed perspective, he shouldn't have to worry about that sort of thing.

Tony's lips fell to a frown. "I will have you know that in a world of Superhumans, I was one of the very few who could stand toe-to-toe with all of them, and without abilities," he said simply. "The porter gives everyone abilities, so you're in the same boat as I am, kid."

It was a nasty reality check, a very nasty one, and one that he had bent the truth of slightly. He had been that way, until the Extremis. Until he had stupidly shot himself with an experimental, modified virus.

"What information are you looking for? My suit? That's the cardinal sin of stealing from Tony Stark, I'll have you know."

John looked Tony in the eye. There was no way that this guy, whoever he was, whoever he could be, was going to scare him. John wasn't intimidated by guys like this. Whoever Tony Stark was, he was a man.

"So?" he said, levelly. "That doesn't mean anything to me." Maybe it was youth that made John this way, but more likely it was character. "You're not stupid, you know that your encryptions aren't easy access." Which meant, also, that Tony probably realized what John would be capable of, once his technopathy was under his control and fully realized. But John didn't say that.

"I don't want to rebuild it. I don't want to build anything with an AI even remotely this sophisticated." An AI that could kidnap people from other worlds. It might not be the same suit but...the information was there, somewhere.

"You're right, I do know. I also know that even when someone gets in, when I get my hands on them, it's another story, and I'm sure you're well aware of this now, aren't you?" he asked.

"I don't care that you don't want to rebuild it. The Technology is for nobody's mind but mine, and that means that if there's something you want to know, you come to me, not sneaking in and trying to steal it like a rat," he stated. "The suit's AI isn't something you could even understand, it's fully integrated to me, and me alone," he explained.

The AI of this suit wouldn't make sense, not unless one understood the way Tony's brain works, and very, very few people understood that.

John takes a moment and looks at Tony, then around. "Look, if you going to kill me, just do it," he said. His comm unit, on the other hand, said something different - it had already begun to wire the information to his personal computer, the one locked up in one of the bunkers that John had found when he had been looking for a place for George.

He hated being teased.

Maybe John couldn't understand the AI - more likely than likely. But he also didn't think that anyone would give him the information he wanted just because he asked, except maybe GLaDOS, and John wasn't in the habit of asking GLaDOS for favors - that wasn't why he liked her. He knew that she would triangulate the location of his processor - she knew how, she could always find him - if he went missing.

"So what are you going to do?"

How dumb was this kid? Interfacing with the comm took nanoseconds, and then it was a quick cut transmission, before he leveled his eyes on him.

"Kill you?" he asked, a bit incredulously. "Who gave you the impression that I'm in the business of doing that?" he asked. Who would dare assert that? He may have to make some tough decisions, but he had never been one to go for that path, and he wasn't about to start now.

"What am I going to do? That really depends on how far you're willing to concede to me," he said simply. "Are you willing to accept help? Not try and hack into my suit again? Or am I just going to need to put you in jail?"

"It's not personal," popped out of John's mouth way before he could even process it. It was simply that everyone seemed to be in the business of killing John Connor. It was a fact of his life. Fuck up, options usually were death, or running.

He ran a lot.

"What kind of help?" The question was wary, his eyes narrowing just a bit. He thought about it, for a minute. "I know what I need to know about it," he said by way of response, however. "It's not what I'm looking for."

John refused to go to jail.

Tony tapped the side of his head as he looked at the guy. "Look, you obviously need help with your powers, and I've been there before," he explained. "You think you're going to be able to learn to think like computers on your own? It's not easy, and it's better when you have someone who thinks like computers as well," he explained.

John raised an eyebrow, and thought about it. He wasn't sure if this was an offer, or not. He knew for a fact that GLaDOS wouldn't like it at all, but then, John wondered if she had to know. There wasn't much she couldn't find out, though.

The temptation was there.

This wasn't a computer turned into a person. This was someone who actually knew what he was doing.

"No one would have to know?"

"Nobody would have to know," he confirmed, outstretching his hand to the kid.

This was what he did, surprisingly. John was young, and scared. He was trying to figure things out that were probably beyond what he was used to, and to be thrust into this world where computers and robots were turned human, and everyone given superhuman abilities? Well, it was enough to make a head spin. Tony realized this. If he hadn't spent years in this sort of situation, he would be in the exact place John was right about now.

John stared at it for a minute, and finally he took Tony's hand. GLaDOS would have to know, John realized in that instant, as he shook it. If she didn't, and she found out, she would be beyond angry, and John didn't want her to be upset.

"Okay," he said, finally, and crossed his arms over his chest. "You tell me when and where, and I'll be there."

If there was anything John could do, it was this. Learning something new could only help.

He just hoped his mother never showed up here. He didn't want to imagine Sarah Connor versus Tony Stark.

"You'll begin Monday morning, at 10 in the morning," Tony prompted, shaking his hand, and programming the meeting into his schedule.

"It will be a bit of shadowing, as well as work with the Initiative, where you'll be learning to use your abilities with other people at your age," he explained.

Then, he paused, a smirk curling up his lips. "Don't look so upset, it's not like you just made a deal with the devil," he prompted. "Actually, he wasn't too bad," he added, tapping the side of his chin. "Didn't kill me, at the very least."

John couldn't help but laugh, a little, through his nose. "Yeah, I'll see you then."

It wasn't Tony that he was afraid would kill him. If Tony hadn't killed him about this, then John had nothing to worry about. "Show me out?" he asked, his voice still quiet.

Now his only worry was telling GLaDOS.

Tony turned, the door unlocking as he did so, before he opened it for John. "Come on, I'll show you the way, and if I see you trying to pull another stunt like this again," he paused for effect.

"Well, I think you know what will happen."

John took a breath, a pause, and nodded. "Yeah, I know," he said. "I'll see you on Monday?"

He watched Tony's body language, and walked through the door. "You don't have to worry," he said, but privately, he thought, that if he ever tried it again (which he wouldn't promise not to do, but it was unlikely), he wouldn't get caught.

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You Better Find Someone to Blame;

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I'm so sorry I didn't tag back yesterday! It was a busy day!

Hahaha s'okay!

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