11 / 26 / 08 - Chastity, Stark
It is an interesting project on Tony Stark's worktable tonight. The robotic arms are busy at work on a machine designed for destruction and havok, guided into spot-welding weaponry onto the metal shell. The maestro behind the work is humming happily as the construct of iron and electronics is slowly but surely brought closer to read to unleash upon the world...
Chastity is beaming happily from behind a pair of dark welding goggles as she instructs the arms, "Here. Yeah, hold the wheel in place while I get the belt tight..." The robot is a six wheeled frame, with a weighted metal flywheel as a weapon being attached to the front. It's a class project and she is in nerd heaven working on it.
Some kids have parents to do their schoolwork. Adults, apparently, have their bosses -- not to do it, or even to help, but rather to loan neat shiny tools and watch. Stark is seated off to the side, clear of the work area, fiddling with a curved bit of metal in his hands that is marked by a long score. There's a larger metal piece before him, currently unattended to in favor of idle study of the smaller. "You know, if you don't win, I'm going to be kind of disappointed."
"Only way I'm going to lose is if I go up against a lateral spinner with a way heavier wheel. Like Nightmare versus Warhead. Odds are pretty low," Chastity insists, dorking out over the televised version of the tournaments that are a staple of engineering programs. "I'll even have a Stark Industries sticker on him. He'll make you proud."
"Oh, good," Stark says, watching as the robot warrior gets his belt adjusted. A hint of humor creases the corners of his eyes. "A sticker. You'll really have to win, then, you know. Pressure will be on."
"He'll be representing you," she taunts Stark. Chas tinkers with the belts a bit more, half-mumbling to herself, "Should name him Little Tony." Then she finally lifts her head up. "What're you working on? You've been kind of... closed-mouthy tonight. That means either it's something that you want to keep secret or something embarrassing."
"See? Pressure. I'm not sure I'm ready to officially license him yet," Stark taunts back, humor mildly conveyed in his usual flat manner. "I'm, uh, just doing some body work. On some metal parts." He shrugs. The word 'SECRET' all but flashes over his head in neon.
"Like a book," she tells him. "Hold it there. I'll be right back," she tells the arms, apologetic for walking away from them in mid-task. Chas can't help but treat them like little people. She makes her way over toward Tony, brushing her hands off and with her usual gimpy little gait. She stands in front of him, her hands on her hips and a smile on her face. "Body work on metal parts of what?"
"Metal parts of a metal thing." The piece in Stark's arm is somewhat baffling, but the larger metal behind him is clearly shaped to fit a man's torso. The shape has more or less been restored, but the shiny brushed chrome finish is seriously marred, showing shadows and scars. He gives her his very best bland face.
"Wait." Chastity looks at the metal piece behind him, leaning up onto her toes so that she can see past him without moving over there. "Is that...?" Her eyes go back to him, a little wider than before.
"Is what?" Stark asks, all innocence. He focuses his attention on the piece in his hand rather than follow Chastity's gaze, or meet it.
"The plans you showed me, the suit." Chastity's eyes go wider and she blurts out, "It's finished!? You finished it and you didn't tell me and you broke it already?!"
Stark looks chagrined. "Took it out for a test drive." He slouches, marginally, and mutters something about icing problems.
"I bet I could make them pinch you," Chastity says, glancing back over her shoulder toward the worktable. "Icing?" Her dork-mode is fully engaged now. It is something like a double-load of it, considering what she was working on before. "Come on. Talk to me."
"Bet you couldn't," Stark counters, a little smug. He leans forward to set the smaller piece next to the larger and rolls his chair a few feet to one side to wake a moderately sized screen and tap up blueprints and data. "Took it up to see how high it can go." His eyes gleam. "It can go high. Managed to break the ice on, uh, descent in time to slow the fall, but." He turns his hand in the direction of battered armor. But. "I'm going to try a different alloy and work on a few other issues for the next model."
"How do they keep airplanes from icing?" Chas wonders, aeronautics not being her strong suit. However, with the subject up, she is probably going to be buying books. "You are such a jerk. You didn't even let me see it finished before you broke it." She gives him a deeply, deeply wounded look.
"Well. Once it was finished, I had to try it on, and once I'd tried it on, I thought, as long as I was testing it, I might as well give it a full test." If you give a billionaire a robot suit...! Stark changes the subject to explain all about averting icing in more detail than Chastity could ever want to know in the hope of distraction.
The worst part is that there is no such thing as more detail than Chastity could ever want to know. She dutifully listens to all of it, taking it in and even asking questions about his plans on combatting the issue. "So," she says, after letting the distraction take hold for quite some time. "When do I get to see it?"
Stark's ideas are brilliant and also shiny in combating the icing issue. Then he pauses, glancing over his shoulder, and then back at Chastity. "Some of it is still being repaired," he admits. "Remanufactured, refitted. Making a few changes based on things I noticed in use that I missed in design. But."
Though she is trying her best to remain calm and keep needling him to let her see, her excitement is channeled into toes wiggling furiously inside of her shoes. Chastity is maybe on the verge of exploding. "But. But but. You know you can trust me. And you know having a second set of eyes involved in development and design is important. You /know/ it."
A narrowing of Stark's eyes conveys a quiet hint of humor. "That's true," he allows reluctantly, obviously Willing To Be Persuaded.
Chastity does this odd little thing where she jumps. She jumps pretty good for a gimp, too. She bounces upward and when she lands, she has her legs spread out a little and outstretches both hands at him, "Come on, /please/!" Her voice ventures just a little toward nasally. Chastity is begging.
"Oh. Well. There's the magic word." Stark picks up the two bits of metal at the counter and rises to his feet. He crosses over to what is, apparently, a tall and deep and otherwise unremarkable metal cabinet that has been there as long as Chastity has made her little trips. Now, however, it has clearly been repurposed, complete with fancypants locking system. Stark keys it open with a touch of his hand and scan of his prints and then steps back. Behold: Warmach-- er, Iron Man 2.0. It is missing a few important bits, the largest and most obvious of which is in Stark's hands. "There's video, too," he adds, all a-tempting.
When the locker opens, revealing the suit inside, Chastity's mouth gapes. Seeing blueprints and a foot was not the same as seeing the same thing, even if it is in a state of disassembly. "Tony..." she says, breathless and reverent. She wanders closer, clearly in love. "Video?" she chirps.
As Chastity goes to investigate, Stark holds the chest piece up, and reaches back to temporarily secure it. With the piece restored, the suit looks much more ... suit-like. The last piece he simply sets to the side before turning back in the direction of his prior workspace. "This way," he says.
One of Chastity's hands stroke sover the chest plate once it's in place. Then she scurries after Tony, the brace on her leg protesting the speed at which she follows in her excitement with a little creak. "This thing is incredible. I mean, the design and... man. Even when we were working on it, I didn't think I'd ever see it."
"A lot of the preliminary work was already done with the Sentinel body armor," Stark admits as he pokes the screen a few times to cue up the appropriate video. Without sound, the image plays of Stark in some sort of dark body suit stepping up and into silver boots. It appears that the central space of the garage is a lot awesomer than previously suspected, with multiple robot arms used now to assist in a particularly sort of dressing. "This is all refinement."
There is staring, her mouth agape. Chas starts glancing around the garage, between movements on the video, to try to figure out where that space is stashed. "Refinement," she repeats. "It's all so streamlined. It's the sexiest piece of engineering I've ever seen."
It appears to be roughly in the middle of a clear space between rows of cars, in the broad space toward the exit. Gadget-lust in his eyes, Stark watches the assembly. "It is," he agrees. H-O-T/-T/. "Wouldn't be possible without this, though," he adds, and taps his chest.
Chastity looks toward Tony and his arc reactor. There is some odd blushing that is evidence of nothing on her cheeks. She turns back to the assembly. "I wanna play with it," she says quietly, almost hiccuping it out.
"It isn't a toy," Stark says, mildness slightly edged by Grim, Heroic Purpose.
"No, but it's... I don't mean like, I want to build a sandcastle with the head." Then she stops, looking a hint spacey as she imagines just such a thing. Chastity's brain is an interesting place sometime. "I... you can't work on it yourself if you have it on. You need someone to /help/. I want to help."
Stark's eyes cross, just slightly, as he tries to imagine such a sandcastle. He throws the idea away to focus on her offer. Where he was easy to persuade to show off his toy, here, he hesitates. He scuffs the backs of his knuckles down the line of his jaw.
"I already helped you /design/ it," the pint-sized mechanic points out, lifting herself up onto the balls of her feet as she tries to be firm with him. "I understand what it's about. I... I don't know. I've already done so much with you down here, I feel like it's my job to keep going."
"Why don't we go over the proposed changes, then?" Stark says in compromise, glancing back at Chastity. He lifts his eyebrows at her. "If I missed anything /else/, other than the icing issue, I'm sure you can find it."
Chastity nods her head to that. She is tenacious sometimes! She has dug into this and doesn't seem so likely to let go. "Show me what you're revising. Do you have all of the tests recorded? I want to see them. Not just because it's cool."
"Yeah. I made a few changes from the last time you saw the plans--." Stark pulls up a variety of tests, although he closes one with a hasty, "Ah. Right. Acceleration." From boot to full suit, they go through the tests, and from there, to new revisions. HOW FASCINATING.
What robot suit? Oh, THAT robot suit? No, never used it.