[open] Brainstorm has competition

[smarterthandad]

Who: Valeria and visitors
Where: Her under-construction lab
When: Anytime from about a week after arrival on
What: Tiny supergenius for hire and/or underhanded plotting
Warnings: Val's Prowl-level ethics, idk

Based on what she acknowledged was her incomplete understanding of the Cybertronians' factions and the balance of power as it stood after their war, Val had decided that Optimus Prime asking for her scientific expertise counted as carte blanche to do what she wanted--not that she wouldn't have anyway, but the imprimatur of authority never hurt--which had at first mostly involved browbeating Drift into helping her scout locations, and then move heavy objects even an adult human wouldn't have been able to budge. Now, though, things were finally coming together to the point where she could get some useful work done.

She was rapidly filling up the floor space with remote-controlled equipment to let her manipulate enormous Cybertronian technology without needing to call for help every time, but much of it was still half-built. The spacious catwalk around the edge of the room at convenient Transformer eye height was quite finished, however. Val was used to having to look up at people, but 20 feet or more was a bit much, thanks. She should probably add some antigrav scooters when she got a chance; a room large enough to host even Optimus or Megatron comfortably made for a lot of walking when you were three feet tall. As with so many other things on her to-do list, that would have to wait until more pressing concerns were out of the way.

Like the fact that it didn't seem as though their war was quite as over as they said it was, so in true Cybertronian fashion, she'd focused on weapons. Her own Earth had something to say on that front, and after throwing together a few basic EMP grenades and an x-ray laser (you know, just in case) Val had switched to more interesting designs. Duplicating Iron Man's repulsors with Cybertronian tech had been a snap, though an adequate portable power source was taking time. Obviously it should run on energon, but she didn't fully understand that delightful concoction yet, and for the moment, her new toys were hooked up to a smallish fusion reactor that hummed in the corner behind a symbolic barricade of hazard tape.

The sharp zap of a repulsor blast and the metallic clatter of the makeshift target Val was practicing on were audible from the street, though hearing her giggling about the minor havoc she was causing would require being inside the lab. Not much of a feat--the door was unlocked and she had rigged an enormous "come in, we're open" sign of the sort that hung in the windows of stores on Earth. She found it funny, even if no one else was going to get the joke.

Comments

[towardspeace]

Megatron simply looks around the makeshift lab for a moment after he steps through the door, his expression somewhere between restrained amusement and equally restrained curiosity. She certainly seems to have made progress since the last time he took a look in here.

"Valeria," he says. "I assume you are keeping yourself busy."

[smarterthandad]

She looked over her shoulder as Megatron entered, waving with the hand that didn't have a repulsor strapped to it.

"You know, just the usual. Manhandling technology scaled for someone a minimum of five times my size, bootstrapping a fusion reactor to generate some useful amounts of power because the city grid is a disaster, building a bunch of weapons because some of the people five times my size aren't very friendly. That sort of thing." Val loved nothing so much as building machines, save possibly scheming, and there was plenty of that afoot, so she rattled off the whole litany with good cheer.

[towardspeace]

"Indeed they are not," says Megatron, without much humour – although he still seems curious, perhaps even impressed. He crouches down, taking some care not to step on any of her stuff. "I've found myself similarly ill-equipped to deal with them, actually – I was wondering if you might be able to render some assistance." He'd normally be rather more irritated about being reduced to asking a human for help, but really, he doesn't have much to lose any more – and besides, he likes this one.

[smarterthandad]

There were much deeper depths of ignominy than getting help from Val, even taking into account the whole 'human infant' thing.

"Hmm." She disconnected the repulsor from the power cord, winding the cable up for storage as she ran through the possibilities for a few busy seconds of rapid thought, then looked up at him, studying his face for the minutest reaction. "Why aren't you going to Ratchet or one of the other medics?"

She'd already noticed that his movements were fewer and more deliberate than Optimus', the only other Cybertronian she'd met who was Megatron's size, but that could have been a matter of personality. Now, in the artificial light of the lab, it was much more obvious that his...whatever the glow that shone through his armor was called was dimmer than on the others of his species. Granted, he might just be seguing into asking for a weapon more powerful than that pistol he carried, but, well, Val trusted her observations, and even if he changed the subject, that too was a data point.

[towardspeace]

He should have expected that question, he thinks.

"Ratchet doesn't much like me," he says with a wry smile. "With good reason – but I don't think he'd be very inclined to help me, and even if he did I can't imagine he'd be happy about doing it. And besides... I'm curious about what you can do."

[smarterthandad]

Valeria half-smiled as her conversational bet paid off and Megatron didn't show any surprised reaction to it. Nice to be dealing with someone who had a decent amount of skill at the game. "I can do just about anything. The question is time."

And, under these circumstances, payment. While she did enjoy helping for its own sake, and she did like Megatron, she hadn't yet established a secure enough position to be doing things solely from the goodness of her tiny heart. Still, quid pro quo counted as payment, and having favors in the bank to draw against never hurt.

Val set the repulsor down on a lab bench and began the trek to where she'd left her datapad, up a ladder on the catwalk. She really needed to bump an augmented reality visual overlay up her priority list so that this would stop happening. Oh well, being on the catwalk would put her much closer to Megatron's eye level, at least. "Anyway. Ratchet's big on medical ethics. What kind of history do you have that he'd withhold treatment?"

She had her suspicions, but people got more offended over flawed character judgments than they did other things, so better to let him tell what he wanted and fill in the blanks herself with a few strategic questions to Optimus or Drift.

[towardspeace]

"Before I defected to the Autobots I was the leader of the opposing faction in the war," he says, without much hesitation. "And after I defected, one of the conditions of my, ah, freedom, such as it is, is that I have been dosed with a form of energon that drains my strength, to ensure I do not pose a threat in the event my change of spark proves... temporary."

He sounds kind of amused, if wryly so.

"Which was all well and good until we ended up here, and suddenly I actually need to be able to defend myself and my comrades. In theory the effects should wear off in time as long as I'm no longer consuming the poison, but... it would be a slow and unpredictable process."

[sparkwhisperer]

Tarn has been pacing the city for days in search of a Decepticon alliance. As it turns out, to his dismay, this new Cybertron is full of mostly Autobots and traitorous rubbish. His energy is low, his frame is littered with scuffs and scrapes, and he's irritated. He glances at ‘come in, we’re open’ sign but ignores it, figuring he will find more of the same in the relatively fixed up building. That is until he hears a rather powerful sounding blast. He pauses briefly, before doubling back to investigate. If it is an Autobot he would like to know who it is and what weaponry they have hiding in there that would cause such a sound.

Tarn enters slowly, glancing around the makeshift lab. Fairly impressive given what they have to work with here. After a few seconds of investigation he observes that the establishment seems to be strangely empty. But—the blast? Where did it come from, if not here? Tarn loudly clears his throat before taking another step in.

[smarterthandad]

Well. That certainly looked like a Decepticon insignia being worn as a mask. Val's eyes flicked over Tarn's imposing frame, cataloging his armor and the damage to it, the hints as to his altmode, the double fusion cannon... Not a scientist, she felt secure in concluding.

Fortunately, she'd gotten Uncle Doom's force field up and running first thing for just this sort of circumstance. Sure, she could stay hidden behind one of the pieces of lab equipment--none of these guys ever seemed to look down--but in her own intellectual way, she was as brash and overconfident as Rodimus.

"Down here," Val said, stepping out where he could see her and waving one black-gloved hand in an amiable enough greeting. Megatron might be wearing the other team's colors these days, but the things she liked about him suggested she could get along quite well with his former organization if she had to.

Or, if his initial reaction of restrained disgust upon meeting her turned out to be characteristic, that was what targeted EMP bursts were for--assuming this guy was dumb and incautious enough to start something when she had the home field advantage.

Either way, it should prove interesting.

[sparkwhisperer]

even as Tarn stares down at the floor he almost doesn't see her. But there she is. a tiny little thing among the lab equipment. Tarn squints, optics brightening in barely suppressed interest, before kneeling and leaning down to better inspect what appears to be the smallest organic that he has ever come across. Upon further examination he finds her to be repulsively fleshy. He makes a sort of sound of disgust.

"What is Primus' name..." He grumbles, hand beginning to reach forward to bring the small organic closer for a better look. How could such a small thing make such a big blast? Or create such an impressive workshop of this size? Surely this is some sort of strange pet and the owner is merely hiding or lurking in an adjacent room.

[smarterthandad]

Wow, rude. His reaction suggested Val was the first human he'd ever seen, so she'd cut him a little slack, but he was on thin ice.

"If you insist on picking me up, be careful. I only have an endoskeleton." And a force field that could absorb a hit from the Hulk, but Tarn didn't need to know about that as long as he behaved himself.

[sparkwhisperer]

Tarn grasps her, lifting her like one would a piece of garbage that you don't particularly want to touch. Oh god she is so fleshy. He spins her around, observing from every angle.

"What ever would a creature like you be doing here?" he pokes her in the chest with one of his fingers. She is so small and so squishy.

It would be so easy to just...crush her.

[smarterthandad]

Val had unbelievable self-control for a three year old, but that only meant she didn't immediately start screaming when picked up like a dirty tissue. She wasn't going to put up with being treated like a petting zoo exhibit. "All right, that's about enough of that." She pushed at the offending finger with a minuscule hand, not with any hope of moving it, but just to make clear that, if he had any manners, poke-the-human time was over.

"I'm not sure why I'm here, but I'm working on an answer to that." She gestured around the lab like she owned it. Which she did, regardless of giant robot opinions on organics, thank you very much. "My leading theory is probability manipulation, but given the scarcity of data at this point, that's just a guess."

[pffft]

Now here was a sight he'd almost expect from Brainstorm - well, sans the human accommodation of things. Of course, the jet might have been delving a little more into the reality bending area of weaponry by now, but given Val isn't exactly in her element, she could get a pass.

In the end, Prowl is impressed at the set-up, familiar as he was with human adaptability. Taking one look at the target that clattered to the ground, he glances back at the girl who fired the weapon to begin with.

"Testing the quality of your merchandise?"

[smarterthandad]

"What makes you think this is for sale, Mr. Prowl?" Val replied, looking up at him with an especially angelic expression that anyone who spent much time around her would soon learn meant she was plotting something the exact inverse of angelic.

"Anyway, no, I'm calibrating." She stretched up a whole couple of feet (hey, it was a reach for her) to where she'd left her datapad on a protruding bit of one of the salvaged Cybertronian machines she was in the process of repurposing. "The guy I...borrowed this design from is kinda twitchy about intellectual property, so I'm having to reinvent the controls algorithms as I go. Just as well--I'm better at it than he is."

Somewhere in another universe, Tony Stark suddenly and for no apparent reason found himself extremely indignant.

[pffft]

"I'm fairly certain an alternate dimension is out of the jurisdiction of whatever Earth-based justice system decides to take up your case."

Prowl goes down on one knee to get a better look at the repulsor weapon. He was certainly curious of her capabilities after seeing what she managed to set up in a few days time. Perhaps monitoring this human's progress would be more beneficial than he originally thought.

"You certainly don't seem convinced that our war is over."

[smarterthandad]

"It's not like he'd sue. Friend of the family." She obligingly held up the hand with the repulsor strapped to it, for all the good those extra few inches would do for Prowl's optics. A circular device with a white glow that died away as Val powered it down so as not to ruin Prowl's day with a repulsor blast to the face, it was tiny by Cybertronian standards, but still too large for her hand, with a cable running from it to the generator.

"Like you are?" she replied to his not-too-subtle segue with an 'oh, please' expression on her face. You didn't broach the topic that way if you believed the war was over. "Your species had been in a state of total war for four thousand millennia until the Decepticons suddenly surrendered less than a year ago. Of course it's not over."

TWO MONTHS LATER

[pffft]

That actually gets a chuckle out of the stoic Autobot.

"You understand our situation better than half of high command," he remarks cynically, taking a look at the the repulsor strapped to her hand. While it was small, his eyesight was specifically designed for detecting tiny debris and miscellaneous trace substances.

"Impressive work. Should we be expecting a starship off this planet with enough time?"

[smarterthandad]

Val snorted. "A starship? Why bother? I'm going to build a Bridge--that's what Dad calls his transuniversal portal--and then everyone can go home."

She took off the repulsor, unplugging it and starting to wind up the power cable. "Oh, and if any of you try to bring your war to my Earth I'll blast you all so far into the multiverse you won't even recognize the laws of physics anymore." She said it conversationally, like she was cluing Prowl in on a good place to get his tires rotated.

[milkruns]

After June cooled down from the initial shock of discovering there was an unsupervised three-year-old on Cybertron -- a three-year-old -- she decided to pay Valeria a visit. Based on what Ratchet said, she's...some kind of a supergenius? Which, granted, definitely sets her aside from the rest of the toddler bunch and is apparently enough to convince the Cybertronians that she can take care of herself perfectly fine, but going on general Cybertronian judgment when it comes to human kids...that's not a ringing endorsement.

It's not like Valeria is her child, but as far as June knows she's the only even remotely qualified parent for light years, and June figures it wouldn't hurt to at least check on her.

June's only metric for "genius child" is inexplicable computer wizard Raf Esquivel, so needless to say she's a little bowled over when she wanders into Val's lab. This is...a whole new level of gifted child. June glances around with a slightly thunderstruck expression on her face, trying to locate a tiny human in the vast swath of supertech.

"Valeria?"

[smarterthandad]

"Who's asking?" Val replied, looking down at June from the catwalk, chin braced on the adult-height railing. Her voice was as high-pitched as a small child's should be, but her pronunciation was clear and adult. She had a pair of goggles pushed up on her forehead, and the green glow from the circuitry of her body suit was quite obvious in the artificial lighting of the lab.

[milkruns]

June looks up from where the tiny voice is coming from, and she has to stifle her surprise. That sure is a toddler, but she is definitely not your average toddler. June's pretty good with kids, but this is...hm.

"My name's June Darby," she says with a slight smile, deciding to just go with plain old friendly, and she steps further into the lab, glancing around again -- this time really taking in the equipment around her. It's...well, impressive would be an understatement. "Ratchet told me about you." Conveniently, she leaves out the part where she yelled at him for a few minutes about it. "Did you really build all this yourself?"

[smarterthandad]

"Sort of. It's mostly stuff I scavenged and modified. Cybertron had a good tech base before its inhabitants trashed it." And now half of them were gearing up for Round Two. Adults just could not be trusted, no matter the species.

"The name 'Reed Richards' doesn't mean anything to you, does it?" Val asked as she started down the ladder to the shop floor, datapad under an arm. Might as well find out if June was from an Earth more recognizable than Megatron's description of his own version of the human homeworld made it sound. The fact that she'd been surprised by Val's appearance didn't mean much; even people back home who really ought to know better couldn't quite deal with a three year old who could run intellectual rings around them.

[milkruns]

"I'm afraid not," June admits, cocking her head to the side slightly. It doesn't surprise her, though; she's slowly getting more comfortable with this whole 'alternate universes' thing Cybertron seems to have going on. She walks a little closer to the catwalk, stopping to examine a worktable that looks like it's covered in scattered weapon parts. Valeria's an industrious little tyke, that's for sure. "Who's that?"

[smarterthandad]

"My father. If you've never heard of him, we're not from the same universe," Val said, matter-of-factly. Her family might not be the most famous people on Earth, but only because the competition was so stiff.

She hopped down from the ladder with a puff of breath as she landed. Being small had so many disadvantages that she'd be tempted to do something about it if the problem weren't guaranteed to be self-correcting. The decade it was going to take wasn't exactly what she'd call optimal, though.

Val trotted over to where June was standing and offered a tiny hand to shake. "Nice to meet you."