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Summary: Allie walks past security to pay an enlightening visit to Tony.
Date: June 17, 2010
Log Title Where's Security?
Rating: PG-13
NYC Stark Towers
//One of the many conference rooms in the main tower. //
The sun is just passing its highest point in the sky, donning the sign of mid-afternoon. It is /extremely/ hot, today. Who decided to turn on the heat outside? Though, that makes it somewhat easier for Allie to convince security and secretaries at the information desk to direct Allie towards Stark's current location in the building, convinced that Allie is there on a meeting, and Tony probably not wanting to be contacted at the moment.
Tony has settled himself in a conference room on the 43rd floor. This particular room had an extensive collection of computer monitors, wall sized displays and communication equipment. He was not there for a meeting or to be connecting to anyone in particular. Instead he worked furiously on gathering information about attacks in New York over the last three months. Each screen on the conference table depicting a different news article. The screen displays on the wall were remaining blank for the moment.
The door to the conference room opens with a light rap on the door. Allie takes a step in, looking back at the secretary who led her there, "Thank you, miss." Before continuing into the room and shutting the door behind her. "Hey there, Mr. Stark." She's wearing a different shirt, today! This one is a white-button up shirt with sleeves rolled up mid-forearm. It's actually the same type of shirt she had one when she fought Kali not but a day or so ago. The woman takes a glance at one of the conference screens, "Is this a bad time?"
Tony is aware that Ally has entered the room but he's caught up in organizing a few screens of information that can't be stopped until completed. Once he's able to remove himself from the system he glances up to where she's standing. "I have a moment or two. Please, take a seat." Quickly he flips off the monitors so that all screens around him fade to black.
Allie moves towards a seat near the head of the table. While pulling out the seat to, well, sit on it, she removes a few cables from her pocket, and a small black box. The cables and box are set on the table as she takes the seat, "Thanks, Tony. I understand you must be very busy." She pauses to take the box, and hook up some of the cables to it. Some of the cables end in some very normal, standardized ends, while others are more proprietary. "You said I could come here if I wanted to tell you something, and so I did. I've been living a facade for a long, long time." She looks up to Tony for a moment.
Tony leans back in his chair, noticing that she's managed to bring a device into the building. He thinks that his security has gotten too lax but Allie doesn't strike him as someone about to blow up his conference lounge. "You've peaked my interest. I'll just let you explain what it is you're needing to get off your chest."
Allie adjusts her bangs out of her eyes, "Then I'll start with this." She slides up her sleeves and undoes a couple buttons of her shirt. There's a soft whirring and just under her collar bone but above the solar plexus, a square of artificial skin rises and slides to the left to show the inner workings of her chest; a bolted reactor unit sparking electricity with bubbling reactor waste. The top half of her forearms are split and slide over the underside of her arm, as the undersides rise to expose all the intricate mechanical parts of her arm, and the metal infrastructure. "You've probably seen things like this?"
Tony nods once as he takes in the working bits that are on display with a keen engineering mind. "This explains why you felt it necessary to mention I hadn't a chance in hell of getting into your pants." Its not every day that a woman walks into his office revealing that their a cyborg. He's quickly over that train of thought as he focuses on the power supply. "That's so 80s, but I've seen the tech."
"It may be 80s, but it's clean energy for hundreds of years. It's also capable of overloading itself to the point that every part of my body is fried. There's a software limiter on that." Allie smiles a little bit, "But I've had to rely on myself and my father's company to keep this body in the condition and technological state it's in, but, something crossed my mind." The cyborg taps her fingers on the conference table in a bit of a repeating beat, "Would you help me upgrade? I — keep getting into more and more fights lately and I'm running out of replacement parts. I have the modularity of a 1920's printing press." She frowns. Something about asking Tony Stark for help is messing with her nerves, and that might seem apparent by her expression.
Tony leans back toward the table. Now fingertips drum just at the edge of the long conference table. Cold Fusion, in his mind, was not a clean energy source. He did feel a tad terrible for her condition but he wasn't about to agree to upgrading a cyborg that he barely knew. Even if they were entertaining and a bit easy on the eyes. "I give you props for coming in here and requesting such a thing but you must know I'm not going to just agree to bringing you out of the stone age."
Allie begins folding back her arms back into their normal appearance, should someone walk in. The reactor remains uncovered, though. "You're a business man, Stark. We both know this." Allie grins a bit, leaning forward a bit, that black box has so far remained unconnected to anything. "Why don't you propose something. A contact? A test? It's on the table."
"I admire the drive, Allie. I really do." Tony rubs a hand across his go-t then drops the hand back to the table. "I don't want you thinking that I'm shooting down your request. Nor do I want you to start prostrating yourself to my whims. If you're seriously interested in moving on a different path you need to be yourself." He leaves out his main objection is not having a track record of her behaviors.
Allie leans back in her chair, folding her hands together by interlacing her fingers. "I don't know want to think or do anymore at this point." Allie sighs and looks up at the ceiling, resting her head on the back of the chair. "You've probably tried to look me up on your computers and found nothing, right? Do you find that suspicious?"
"Everything is suspicious until proven otherwise," Tony comments. He turns his chair sideways before leaning back into it. 'I take it you erased every mention of your existence due to your particular situation."
Suddenly, Allie leans forward, causing the chair to squeak a little bit. Very calmly she takes one of the proprietary cable ends from the black box with one hand, while raising the nape of her hair with the other hand. The end of the cable snaps nicely into her neck. "I didn't have to. I'm practically dead after this happened." One of the more common ends of the cable box is plugged in the screen in front of Allie.
That's probably a big no-no, interfacing with Stark's computer network, but hopefully he won't complain too much as she networks with one of the screens on the wall. The screen in front of Tony flickers online in a pretty low-res and choppy video, it's odd in that some blotches are more focused than others, and some objects are also more focused than other. It's literally a memory being played back straight from Allie's mind. Allie is currently looking around the vehicle with a butler who's driving, she can't be too old, barely 10. When she looks at her legs and her hands, she's really quite frail. The pair seem to be driving down a crowded street in Seattle during the 1950s or 60s. More notably, traffic is looking /really/ bad, it's not moving at all.
As Allie looks up in the video on the screen, there's a resounding *CRASH* from one of the nearby factories, a gleaming metal humanoid smashing through the building into a nearby sky-scraper. The memory is really focused now, except for the hero that then crashes into the robot. The hero is.. hard to put a finger on, unidentifiable, though the two struggle for a bit. People are starting to get out of their cars and run, the Butler is trying to help Allie get out of the car seat. — Suddenly Allie looks back up through the car's front windshield and the metal robot is flying directly at the car, looking like it might have been thrown or hit hard enough to send it flying. A second later, and the robot villain smashes in the vehicle and static flares across the screen.
The real Allie looks to Stark, with her eyes now open, she obviously had to concentrate to bring that memory back into a digital form. She looks really sad. "I thought all heroes were all like that, uncaring for the general public. For so long."
Tony is not thrilled that Allie has hooked something up to his system but he allows it to run tho he could at anytime stopped her connection. He watches the grainy video realizing that it has to be a memory playing back. The scene is not unlike others that he's witnessed. He's even been a part of a few fights that have launched head long into traffic. "It is unfortuante that things happen to innocent people. A person trying to stop someone from harming people can't save everyone but they try to keep the damage as contained as they can. We don't play God Miss Storms, we simply pray to whatever God we believe in that we've done the best we could with what we have."
"Could have fooled me, Tony. Maybe things have changed, but the destruction has always been terrible in my eyes. I was lucky one of the lucky few to survive an incident like this. I still think 'heroes' shouldn't go about with reckless abandon. But if you wanted to know the real me, and why I feel the way I do. You're one step closer to that. One more step than most people get." She disconnects the wire from the computer and her neck.
"Look, you can see things the way you want but from personal experience I can't sit around watching some lunatic go on a rampage. I don't' value one life over another but if no one steps in to stop said raving maniac then more and more come to harm. That's how I see it." Tony swivels the chair back around looking every bit as serious as he does when taking command of a situation. "I appreciate the insight to your past. I understand why I got the tongue lashing the other day. I'm being upfront with you as best as I'm able. I don't allow my tech to be sent out to anyone that shows interest. I'm incredibly disinclined to hand over the kind of tech you seek. Its not a no, Allie. Its a, I'll think about it."
"And that wasn't my way of persuading you to give it to me. It's a, 'You wanted me to be up front, then you need to know a little bit about me'." Allie stands up, buttoning up her shirt and re-sealing her reactor. She also picks up her black box and cables. "I'm sure with all of your technology that you now know where I live. If you're inclined to do anything, stop by sometime." She pauses to push the chair back under the table, "Also, I was adamant that you're not getting into my pants because I feel I'm strong enough to not let a millionaire playboy seduce me." She winks, playfully.
Tony smirks at that. "Oh, I don't think it would be that hard to wind up a few of your gears if I wanted to." Tony rises from his chair and crosses the distance between them. "I'm a billionaire by the way," he speaks softly as he stands next to her. "My toys are more impressive thanks to that."
Allie grins coyly, "We'll see about that, Mr. Stark. I missed a couple zeroes, but I won't make that mistake again." She shoves the cables and such into her pocket. "That reminds me.. — You haven't shown me /your/ impressive toys. But —" She pauses and looks up to Tony, "We'll save that for another time."
Tony finds himself laughing deeply. "That toy is off limits. I'm in a stable-ish relationship. The other?" Tony doesn't normally speak about his personal life all that much but after the display he just witnessed he feels like revealing a small part of himself might be of some use to Allie. "I'm reactor free, my dear. Have been for awhile. The rest of my life story you'll just have to pry out of me."
"Again, I wasn't speaking of that." She replies to Tony, she does enjoy toying around with his ego a bit. "Reactor-free?" Allie pauses to think how that's even possible, she's never heard that Tony Stark is reactor free, and she thought they might have something in common. Oh well. "I'll just bring a crowbar to our next meeting." She smiles.
Tony taps his chest where the reactor used to be. "I'm sure security would allow that in just like they allowed you to bring in the Rubix cube." He walks past her to open the door to the conference room. "Was a pleasure yet again, Allie. Try not to get into too much trouble."
Allie moves towards the door, "I'll just tell them it's an Mp3 player." She sticks her tongue out at Tony, "It was a pleasure, good luck with your business, Tony." She offers a light wave before walking out of the conference room.
